Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles
Issue link: https://magazine.cyclenews.com/i/128103
Gregori o Lavi lla (6) le ads Ne ll Hodgso n In ra ce one. They finished sixth and seventh , respectively. but I th ink that Japan ese riders can be c om petitive when we go to overseas tra ck s. Anywa y, I want to ri de in the World Championship as soon as possi ble ." H i s wins we re so met h i n g t o beho ld - a d isplay of fron t-running do m in an c e in race one and a teasing sit and w'a it in ra c e two , finished off by a pulveri sing b last of spe ed in th e last 10 laps . Just f or fun , as h e explained later. After Tamada's brillia nce in prac t ic e, one-s econd faster than the rest i n regulation and half a second in Superpole , th e resul ts we re b eing written before he took so much as a ha lf a tum of the wheel on Sunday . Eve n tho u g h no one h ad a n answer to Tamada , there were a few other ridd les ans wered by hi s wins . It proved that, with the right twin c y li nder machine and the rig ht rid er o n it, it was po ssible f o r the four cy li nder dom ination at Sugo to b e brok en . It was 1995 when a tw in last won , c o u r te s y o f fo u r - ti m e W orld Champion Carl Fogarty's Ducati, and when it won it was wearing Michelins. This t ime around Tamada 's twin was wearing D u n lo p s, as were the vast majority o f the top f inishers ' machines . Afte r th e complete destruction of the rear tire on Troy Bayliss' Ducati after each race , it was clear that no M ichelin combination would make inroads into the results this time around. In f ac t, yo u could have stuck M ichelins on a Hond a NSR500 GP b ik e today and sti ll no one could have won on it. Th i s one -sided ru b be r co n te st meant tha t th e first M ich elin ri de r in eac h race was 12th , with Colin Edwards and Tadayuki Okada taking turns to be tortured by the resu l t sheets . " I really don 't know what went wrong today," Edward s said. "W e just slid and spun the tires and couldn 't get drive. The other guys seemed to be goi ng forwards but we were going side ways. We didn 't d o any endurance tests on the tires because we d idn 't th ink we had to . We wo n't be d o in g a ny M ichelin tire testi ng because H on d a w ants t o take the eng ines back to tear them apa rt . J ust because they ha ven 't had any prob lems this weekend doesn 't mean that th ere isn 't something in the re, wearin g it away ." Th e Mi ch el in riders aside , it di d leave a level pla y ing surface fo r all th e top riders an d, as some of the results showed, th ere were those who c ould revel in the sweeps and tricky turns of Sugo's la yout. Certa inly the rest of the J ap anese riders we re having a bal l. Hitoyasu Izutsu may have sta g gered awa y from th e field of battle wi th a co uple of b its of sil verw are, for hi s excellent third and sec o nd places, b ut he was far from the m a n he was last seaso n, wh en he won both races: "This was not so enjoya ble as last yea r , obviously ," Izutsu said . "My season hasn 't started of so well in World Superbike , so I am glad to have had a g ood ra c e in Japan in readin ess for the start of th e All Japan Championsh ip s . I d id all I could do in race two , but Tamada was too fast. " Tamaki Ser izawa took a fine thi rd in race two, even if he joked abo ut about scori ng a DNF in race one. "The gea r lever fell off my mach ine in th e firs t race, so I had to stop. It's not an autom ati c , so I had to!" Bostrom (1 5 5), Izutsu (19) an d Co rser (3) ra n in close formation early In leg one, but Tamada (4 9) chased them down and cleared out to w in by over four seconds. cue I e n e _ S • MAY 9 , 200 1 7