Cycle News - Archive Issues - 2000's

W o rl d S u per b ik e C ham p io n s h ip R ound 7 : Eu r oSpeedway CB u sit z Cir cuit. G ermen y B y G ORDON RITCHIE PHOTOS BY G O LD [, G OO SE JQNE 10, 2001 oak at it with a detached , Teu tonic and objective eye, and the first major event at the Lausitzring was , well, cold, detached and Teutonic . The a ntiseptically ne w circuit, the bleak bu t immac ula te la ndsc a p ing , and the impossible-to-fill ubergrandstands left the uncommitted o bserver with a sense of motorcycle e mptiness. A nd that w a s before the rains c ame a nd d rowned the Supersport b o ys , and the start of the second S upe rbike race. And before the spectators had to resort to binoculars to see the occasionally enthralling action on the infield . If the re is such a thin g a s being too big , th e La us itzring is it. Maybe not the glowi ng testi m o ny which would be expected for s uc h an excellently exe cuted raci ng facility , but on a day wh en t he race actio n wa s gen e rall y stru ng out , techn ical , a nd oft en filled with tire -ind uc ed good and b a d for tu ne , th e re was not even much br illia nt ra cing to rave about , no matte r how far awa y it was ta king p lac e from the bulk of th e c rowd. 24 J UNE 20 ,200 1 • c u e I .. Nobody's fault of course, not least the riders and spectators, but even the enthusiasm of t h e local crowd, who had pa id the entirely reasonable sum of 50DM [Deutsche Marksl ( $ 2 1. 7 5) per head fo r the whole weekend . could not generate atmosphe re on the industria l sca le necessary to fill th e newest of Ge rm a ny 's 'ring s with a real bu zz. And how the riders tried , although most of them were toi ling against od ds not of their making . Only Troy Bayliss and Colin Edwa rds escaped the day with their reputations as truly world -class riders in im po ssi b le circumstances intact , although Neil Hodgson had what he reckoned to be his best race of the year - incl udi ng his previous best of a win at Donington Park a mere fortnight before. "I wanted to come to Germany to prove the point that I can win races on circuits outside the UK," Hodgson said . "I thought everything was on tra ck si nc e I to o k po le position and the lea d in ra ce on e. Unfortunate ly, I made th e wro ng tire ch oice a nd I ha d to dr op back a nd th at wa s re a lly frustrating . But e veryth ing cam e together in race two . I wo uld put th a t down to be m y best pe rformanc e of the ye ar. I t imed m y ru n o n Ba y lis s sli g h tl y n .. _ s wrong and I wasn't close enough to make a pass on him. I'm looking forward to doing it all again at Misano." In one respect at least, the Lausitz e vent was just like any other th is year, a difficult one for most of the to p runners , with Colin Edwards summ ing things up with the comment that the championship-wi nni ng tro p hie s were obviously destined to be issue d at the last round and no sooner. "My second race was over when I made a complete mess of the start, " Edwards said. "I could have won the race, bu t I paid the price for not getting it right off the line . I tried as ha rd as I could , but los ing so many places I j us t couldn 't catch up with Troy Ba yliss and Neil Hodgson . I had a win today which makes me happy but this champions hip looks like it will go to the final round: Bay liss may have had better results on the day , with a first and second (ahead of Ho d g so n in race two and behind Ed wards in race one) , but it was Edwa rds who a ppeared to be th e ma n with the lar gest depth of self be lie f. Not in any o bviou s sense in the ra ce s , which were unquest ion a bly th e domain of Bayliss this we e k (20 seconds a head of Edwards in the second race and sna p ping at him in lAb ove) Co lin Edwards (1) lea d s Ben Bostrom (15 5 ), Troy Bayliss (2 1) and the rest of the pack In race one. Edwards went on to w in while Bostrom had one of h is w orst weekends of the se as on. Bayliss would fin ish second In race one, and went on to w in race two. the opener), but even durin g the most humble qu a lifying sessions, whe n yo u can st ill feel the heat of Ed wa rd s ' desire from 10 yards away . His ride from 12th on lap one to th ird in race two was almost the display of the day, or would have been had he not made the er ror of not getting off the line clean ly enough in the first place . Three wins each for Edwards and Ba yliss now , in that old Honda versus Ducati war - which Bayliss obvious ly enjoyed winning this time a round . "It's been a good weekend a nd we ca me away wi th a lot o f points, " Ba yliss sa id. "It certainly wasn't that easy out there in the wet and I ran a very soft rear tire, and I had a lot of s pin in the fina l few la ps." For th e ot her man on th e triumvira t e o f m od ern d a y Su p erb ik in g greatne ss , Tro y Corser, it wa s an oth e r ine xplic a bly poor weekend. By his riva ls ' standards a nywa y. Rumors of disunity in his Ap rilia cam p, m utterin g s a b o ut th e fa iry- t a le T ro y and

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