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World Superbike Championship Round 1 1 : Oschersleben, Lavilla. Meanwhile, Chili was continuing his steady progress, getting past Laconi. At the end of lap 13, the order was Xaus, pulling away from Edwards, Bayliss, Bostrom, Chili, Laconi, Lavilla, Okada, Yanagawa and Hodgson. Xaus was now steadily yanking out a six-second advantage, and the next few laps saw the top four riders having lonely rides. Only Bayliss had a scare, looking down at his rear tire as he started to feel the back end spin up. The end of lap 22 and Xaus had eked out a further half-second lead over Edwards, although Bayliss had Bostrom a little closer to him. Laconi was fighting back also, taking Chili's Suzuki over the start/finish line. The order at the end of the 23rd lap was: Xaus, Edwards, Bayliss, Bostrom, Laconi, Chili, Lavilla, Okada, Yanagawa, Hodgson, a reinvigorated Corser and Toseland. With just three laps to go, the action was toward the back end of erman Polesltter Nell Hodgson (1001 didn't have a very good race day In Gennany. The Brit tries to find away around Tadayukl Okada (8) In their battle for seventh In race one. the top 10, as Xaus built his advantage to eight seconds plus. Corser took Hodgson into the Shell Esses, only for Hodgson to take him right back, both kicking up clouds of Neil Hodgson's cool tactics in a "wet' Superpole competition delivered his fourth success of the season. after a game of 16-man weather watching in the Oschersleben paddock. Originally a "dry" Superpole was declared. but with the onset of rain during Stephane Chambon's flying lap. the first four riders' times were cancelled and the "wet" Superpole rules were dusted off. Each rider was then given 12 Japs in which to set his fastest time, within a 50-minute window. The track remained dry for the duration of the event. despite the gathering rain clouds. and Hodgson overcame a mistake on his penultimate fast lap to set a time of 1:27.325. more than .3 of a second faster than Ben Bostrom's best regulation qualifying time. and faster than any time set last year. Hodgson's fourth pole of the season puts him firmly at the top of the Superpole count. Second qUickest was Troy Corser. just over one tenth behind. with the Aprilia rider shaking his head when he nsalized that his preViouslY unbeatable time had indeed been aced. Corser's time was an impressive mark in its own right. and was set after he had crashed heavily in the final untimed session. bashing his hip and making him dread the creaking and groaning which would accompany his wake up call on race day mornIng. Ruben Xaus was a career best third on his factory Ducati, as he continues his gradual learning curve in his rookie World Superhike season. The last front-row grid position went to World Champion Colin Edwards, on a Castrol Honda, who improved on his regulation qualifying position of sixth. Bostrom ended up fifth. one place ahead of championship leader Troy Bayliss. The SBK international organization still had no news to report about the rumored changes in regulation to the championship for 2002. With the 820 or 830Cc limit for four cylinders supposedly on and off then on again. the previous story that there wouJd be a meeting and announcement to determine the immediate future of the sport was quashed by the organizers of the series. Assen is supposed to be the big revelation now. Francis Batta. owner of the Alstare Suzuki team. who have struggled almost all year with their new Suzuki 750. is adamant that there is no stop gap to make his team competitive again. then he would not be back in Superhike in 2002. He is expected to run a 60Ccc team no matter what. with probably Katsuaki Fujiwara and probably not Karl Muggeridge who has not appeared to settle into the Alstare regime according to some. Niall Mackenzie, former GP rider and British Eurosport SBK commentator. may have another new job soon, according to speculation at Oschersleben. The Scotsman has apparently been to visit Sauber with a view to being hired as the test rider for their three-cylinder GP machine. According to rumors at Oschers. which would not be confirmed or denied by SBK, the Laguna Seca round may be moved next year to start earlier in the year with race day on Sunday. July 7 and not the 14th as planned. The Misano race is also supposed to move from Sunday. June 30 to June 23. Rumors about this year's Imola season ending round being canceled were also flying around the OschersJeren ether. much to the anger and bemusement of SBK, who are organizing the final touches to the event. A huge amount of delays and crashes plagued the final qualifying sessions at Oschersleben. First up. the Superhikes saw four riders off the track. Marty Craggill, who had his Pacific Ducati develop an oil leak after only five minutes of the second timed session, was fonced to pull out at the entrance to tum six - but not before the spilled oil had accounted for the hard-braking Robert Ulm. Marco Borciani and Steve Martin. None were injured. In the Second Supersport qualifying session, another oil leak took five off, and lost more time for the organizers to try and catch up. Finally the dry and then wet Superpole took longer than originally envisaged. making the day as long as anyone in the paddock could remember. Added to the halted and restarted session earlier in the weekend. It made Oschersleben something of a record breaker for pre-race delays. Race day went off without a hitch. Chris Walker. ousted from the Shell Advance 500cc Grand Prix team and looking for a new ride for next year. has been linked with many of the top teams In World Superhike. but not too closely at present. Aprilia has been mentioned. but according to Walker's management. there has been no discussion. Kawasaki is also in the market, but with Izutsu almost certain to replace Vanagawa. and Lavilla very possibly staying on yet again. there appears to be little room for him there. Suzuki? Now SEPTEMBER 12.2001 • cue I • Eventually, Toseland took Corser going into the last turn and looked to take his teammate's scalp next. It was not to be, though, as Hodgson held Toseland and Corser to the there is an intriguing prospect for the man who ditched the Big S - at half past the 11 th hour last year - to chew on. Most see it as an impossible match after last year's acrimonious separation. BRIEFLY••• 12 dust as they ran wide. Meanwhile, Toseland - for the first time this season - was truly on level terms with his teammate Hodgson, playing a waiting game to see what would occur ahead. n • _ so When questioned about the readiness of Ducati to start testing their all-new GP bike. Ducati Corse chief engineer Carrado Cecchinelli declared. "We have a lot of paper. piles and piles of paper, but as yet there is no metal or carbon fiber to go with it." Reports from Italy suggest otherwise. Cecchinelli confirmed that the engineer who had been helping GSE all year had indeed moved onto the GP project, but also stated" like most others he will be working on both the GP project and the existing Superhike development. I think that most Ducati personnel will have input to both GP and Superhike." Colin Edwards showed up in Oschersleben with a new exhaust pipe on his VTR. a single exhaust can adorning the rear of his VTR. Okada and he still had double can versions on display as well. but Edwards used the singie can most often and both used the single version in the races. "The new style exhaust doesn't give any more power or anything. but it does give a smoother feeling throughout the rev range," said Edwards. "Both TadY (Okada] and I tested a version of it at the Suzuka 8Hour, so HRC decided to make it for us for this round." Edwards was also looking a bit off color bringing the wrong boots with him to Germany and thus sporting day glow orange Sidis on the end of his white, green and red Castrolleathers. The GSE team was running Hitachi stickers on the side of their Ducatis at Oschersleben. Hitachi makes earth-moving equipment among its many operation and HM Plant. GSE's existing main sponsor, rents out significant amounts of their equipment. David Hailwood, son of the all-time greatest in many people's eyes. was out at Oschersleben. riding the very MZ250-RE that his father took to victory in the 1963 East German GP at the Sachsenring. His lap was part of an "Oldtimers" display put on to add another dimension to the Oschersieben show. Other bikes on track included Matchless G5s. five or so MVs. TZ 350 and 750 Vamahas and all manner of machinery from yesteryear. Team Chelfi once more missed an SBK round (despite not being on the list of justified absentees). as their rider Javier Rodriguez was on Supersport duty in Spain. a championship he prioritizes over an uncompetitive ride in World Superhike. Despite being down for a round of the World Superhike Championship in 2002. Oschersleben may not stage the race according to quiet rumor. The promoter hopes to get more financial assistance to stage the meeting. The Castrol Honda headquarters in South Uncolnshire are to be graced by British Royalty in late September when Prince Edwards and his wife Sophie Rees-Jones visit the facility during a whistle stop tour of the local area. With several of the new batch of World Superhike riders having never so much as seen Oschersieben before they were asked to set good times. some resorted to getting help from their teammates. Uke Regis Laconi. new 2001 inductee in the Aprilia squad. "I must say that seeing exactly the points were Troy Corser brakes gave me some excellent references. I've got two different setup configurations for my two bikes and now I'm going to choose the most suitable." He made a good choice~ qualifying on the second row on the Valencia-esque circuit. Not all the riders were fans of the Oschersleben track. even those who were to set good times after two days of qualifying. The most extreme example was Superpole winner Neil Hodgson: . It's a funny old track round here. It's really safe, which is good. but like most modem tracks it's been built on only a few acres of land and has no real character. They haven't even given it any real changes of elevation to make it more interesting. It's strange that they put all this effort and money into building new tracks and make them look like Three Sisters [A small track near Hodgson's Birthplace in the UK. which is a by-word for slow lap times in British racing for it's extremely tight, kart track layoutl." Hodgson's initially disappointing 13th place after the first day was due to his lack of familiarity with the track - as his team boss Colin Wright forcibly told those unwary enough to ask if Hodgson had experienced some type of problem on the opening day. "We've been here before. that's all." Was Wright's terse response.