Cycle News - Archive Issues - 2000's

BRIEFLY••• Robert Ulm went back to the future at Assen when he found his GeMn Ducati team unable to compete at the Dutch round because a major preseason sponsor. believed to be the same drink company that supposedly failed to deliver on Katjia Poensgen's 250 Aprilia team. also failed to deliver on the money expected by Gerin. Unable to guarantee to be able to pay the tire bills and so on they would accrue at Assen. the team decided to not do Assen even before the Oschersleben race last week. Ulm was approached by Sergio Bertocchi. the boss of longtime World Superbike privateer competitors Bertocchi Kawasaki. to ride at Assen instead of the still-injured Michele Malatesta. who was told not to even practice on medical grounds. having attempted to come back too early from his nasty Laguna Seca leg break. It was a move back to familiar machinery for Ulm. who spent his first World Superbike season in 1999 on a Gerin Kawasaki. Ulm was philosophical about his latest tum of bad luck. after a season which has seen him crash his Ducati with great frequency and fail to score quite as many points as many expected. The Gerin team is hopin9 to attract enough sponsorship to allow them to complete the final race of the year. at Imola. but at this late stage of the season. they will possibly find this a difficult task. The next stage of modifications to the classic Assen circuit begin in earnest the very day after the World Championship circus vacates the track. in preparation for a new season of racing in 2002. The first changes will be the 165-foot-wide expansion of the paddock area, which will necessitate a modification to the circuit. The existing Veerslang comer will be straightened somewhat to allow for the bigger paddock area. although the character of the circuit will largely remain the same. The latest in a long line of safety improvements at Assen will also see the Mandeveen and Duikersloot comers brought infield. to increase the runoff areas. which cannot expand further outward as it stands. Also new for 2002 will be strategically placed big-screen TVs across from the main grandstand areas. so that the most populous spectator areas will have complete coverage. even when the machines are at the other side of the 3.n-mile circuit. The only sting in the tail is a modest increase in admission price to pay for it. In the longer term. by maybe 2004 or 2005. the northern loop of the track will be shortened to allow much-needed parking facilities. a conference center. hotel and all the other facilities demanded of a modem track. When this is complete. a tribune will be built to house an additional 35.000 spectators. most of who will have a good view of the complete new loop section. Assen has a long history of modifications. with the access roads to the paddock actually formed on the site of the old. completely public roads circuit. The Circuit van Drench (sicl was in its usual September form. sheeting with rain. freezing and inhospitable. unlike the race-mad Dutch. who love their bikes no matter what sound or flavor. The weather radar pictures. relayed on to the internal TV systems. showed a nonstop stream of small rain clouds moving at great speed, and this was the reason so many of the top riders were foxed by the truly impossible to predict weather and cloud formations. So bad were the conditions underfoot that land close by the circuit had to substitute on race day for the regular paddock car park for officials and media. such was the damage done by hundreds of car and bike tires on previous days. Ducat!'s landmark 100th World Superbike pole position. coming courtesy of Troy Bayliss. makes the Italian concem the first to break through the 1CO-pole-positions barrier. The breakdown runs as: Troy Corser and Carl Fogarty 21 apiece. Doug Polen on 16. Raymond Roche on 9. Pier Francesco Chili on 7. Giancarlo Falappa on 7. Nell Hodgson on 7. John Kocinski on 3. Troy Bayliss on a surprisingly low 3. Ben Bostrom and Marco Luchinelli 2 each. with Stephane Mertens and Steve Hislop on one apiece. A pro Superbike racing message emanated toward the Assen World Superbike paddock from an unlikely source - the Moto GP paddock. The disembodied voice came in the form of a fax that Dr. Claudio Costa. boss of the Clinica Mobile. sent to ....AII Motorcyclists From Estoril.' In his usual extravagant style of poetry-cum-prose. the good doctor (whose father was largely responsible for building up the Imola circuit to the high status it enJoys nowl extolled the virtues of motorcycle racing in general and asked that all motorcyclists and race fans attend the event. Carl Fogarty. who was awarded with a special plaque on race day from the track he made his own in the 1990s. was down to return to action. but on Ducat!'s Foggy replica. the Monster S4. He was also slated to compete in a proper Supermoto race in Belgium in early October, giving vent to his greatest newfound passion since retiring. Fogarty has found riding a Supermono CCM machine a great boost to his recovery program. as it allows him to strengthen his arm - and have fun - without resorting to the unnatural position of the racing crouch. Fogarty won a massive 12 races at Assen in his Superbike career. in 16 attempts - a significant amount in terms of his 59-career total. Honda. the world's largest manufacturer. took the peculiar step of changing their VTR pamt scheme midseason. as unveiled in the first sessions at Assen. The freshly livened SPIN race bike. which normally features a red Honda wing to match sponsor Castrol's usual red-and-green logo. has been swapped to match with the silver wing that will grace the side of the new Honda SP2 street bike. due to be launched at EuroDisney. near Paris. on Monday 10 September. The move is designed to ·support and enhance - Honda's PR effort around the large-scale launch of their entire new 2002 model range. It certainly made the VTR stand out. but sadly none of the machines on display were shown in their best light. due to the frequent blankets of rain running in from the west. Rumors at Assen persist of the possibility of there being a single,rider Aprilia satellite team. operated by the parent factory. featuring the talents of longtime RSV Mille Superbike tester Alessandro Antonello. The team would be running Pirelli tires. as part of the move toward a mutually beneficiallong-term partnership. which would cure Aprilia of what some see as a Dunlop supply-and-exclusivity problem. and at the same time cure Pirelli's lack of a factory Superbike to run its ever-improving World Superbike product. Another supposed Italian job next year. again with a Pirelli slant. is that Steve Martin will be joined in the DFX Pirelli team by the talented but frustrated Vitto Guareschi. who has been toiling through an unsuccessful year of Ducati 748/Michelin interfacing. Any expansion of the DFX effort would probably need the adoption of an Italian rider, and Guareschi. a former Yamaha factory World Superbike pilot. would fit the bill. In a depressingly predictable fashion. the technical regulations for the 2002 season have still not been decided. with the next unbreakable deadline being the Saturday after the Assen race. shortly after the next MSMA meeting. hosted in Venice by Aprilia boss and MSMA chairman Ivano Beggio. Then. the Japanese factories. plus Ducati and Aprilia, will argue out the merits of allOWing the 10-percent capacity allowance for the four-cylinder machines in the championships - again - so that the teams. riders. sponsors and all concerned with the future well-being of Superbike racing can start to plan strategy for a season which. as always. will be on us before anyone can catch a breath. The stumbling block is still the usual Japanese one of uniformity of thought. whereby the four Japanese factories. who cannot bear to be seen to be divided outside their own quorum. cannot yet agree on a common course of action. Suzuki and Kawasaki both want the capacity hike. as it is a relatively easy way to make their supposedly uncompetitive machines more attractive to star riders (and simply more powerfull. whereas Honda wants to continue winning with the VTR - and Yamaha doesn't care and would rather worry about the four-stroke GP world and their eventual R1 replacement. The FIM and Rammini are both of the mind that the capacity should be punted up until the new generation of more Superbike-appropriate l0C0ec Japanese fours-cylinder machines come along. but in these more manufacturer-powerful days. any unilateral action on their behalf would be counterproductive in the extreme. From the outside. the situation is messy and muddled. especially with the GP world hurtling toward a brave new reality of four-strokes (however those will tum out in the real worldl. and it appears from the outside that. unlike the days of old. the RM has a definite idea of what to do and how to do it. but the factories are the ones who are unable to come to a swift and satisfactory conclusion. Whoever and whatever is to blame for the delay. it has done the Superbike world no good at all in the eyes of those outside the paddock. The inability of the powers that be to come to a swift conclusion' of how and when any new World Superbike rules come into force has had at least one direct effect on one of the major teams. The Alstare Corona Suzuki team. which is awaiting the news to decide what to do for next year. has postponed its plans to sign up its riders by the time of the Assen round. Not knowing whether It will be worth racing in a class it sees as unwinnable. it's waiting to see if it will retum to a Supersport· only team. as it was before being awarded the Suzuki factory contract three seasons ago. Hitoyasu Izutsu became one of the few people ever to have crashed twice in the same qualifying session when the treacherous conditions at Assen on the first day had him off twice in free practice. The Japanese rider (only a partial fixture in the World Superbike paddock this season as he attempts to defend his Japanese Superbike title as weill recovered to crash another day. when he went down in a three-rider incident in final qualifying with Regis Laconi and Tadayuki Okada. A total of 34 riders had tasted the tarmac before race day. with the looming poor weather making it entirely possible that the 2000 season record of 56 in all classes all weekend would be beaten. No fewer than eight riders crashed in the desperate and sodden final Superstock qualifying session. before many of the youngsters had properly woken up on Saturday morning. Aaron Slight was at Assen. and was linked to one possible new job - Ducati factory test rider. Although he has gone on record many times as saying that he would not test without being able to race as well. he may find the rumored job just to his liking. He has been linked to a ride on the new Ducati GP bike. which is either still only in existence in model and CAD-CAM computer form. or a rolling reality. depending on which way the rumor mill is turning. The lillie Kiwi said. 'I have spoken to Ducati about doing some testing. but that's all, and no one has said anything to me about what bike it would be." Slight will get his first chance to run a NASCAR-style racer at the new British Oval circuit of Rockingham, near Corby in Northamptonshire. before the Imola World Superbike round. Chris Walkar was in the Assen pits. looking for a job for next season. having been sacked from his Shell Advance 500cc GP ride, He had just come from riding a Kawasaki at Rockingham. and he enjoyed the experience. 'I would much rather be out racing in GPs than silting around. but it was good to get a go on a race bike again. It was fun. but it's hard to be standing here watching the others do it all." Walker confirmed that he had had conversations about the 2002 season with many of the teams. but nothing concrete as of yet. In order to make the inaugural World Superbike race atlmola as special an event as possible. the paddock will be open to the public on the Thursday preceding the event. September 27. and a charity football match will be held at 6 p.m. between a team comprising World Superbike staff. riders and media and a euphemistically entitled 'Rest of the World' outfit. As expected. the home of the GP infrastructure. Spain. apparently almost ignored the fact that Ruben Xaus had won a World Superbike race the previous weekend. as it busied itself with the more important business of watching three Italians. an American and a doomed two-stroke race class prepare for what is effectively the third Spanish GP of the four this season. at Estoril in Portugal. At the pre-race press conference. Xaus said that there was no real hoopla in the press about his win. but rumors from Spain suggest that things may be about to change. The national TVE television statIon may be about to lose its rights to show GPs on TV next year. according to sources in Spain. who also report that the station may have been scouting out a deal to bring the traditional four-stroke world into the living rooms of Spain as a replacement for the Moto GP series. Klaus Klaffenbock won his first World Sidecar Championship with a second-place finish behind race winner Steve Abbott at Assen. It is the first time an Austrian rider has won the title and is the culmination of 12 seasons of effort from the determined but often unlucky LCR/Suzuki rider. K1affenbock and passenger Christian Parzer were involved in a three-way struggle for the lead with Webster and J6rg Steinhausen. but strange circumstances for Webster put him out of the running. His passenger Paul Woodhead's hand slipped off the handrail on the sidecar under braking and hit the internal mechanics of the machine. Unable to free it for a while. Woodhead eventually released his hand. only to find he could not hold on to the machine. He suffered a suspected broken scaphoid. although he soldiered on for another lap or so. Forced to pull out. Webster's slim hopes of a championship win for the ninth time went out with him. Steinhausen was also to go out. in equally strange circumstances. His vision was impaired when a plastic bag was blown across his path. Despite braking to attempt to clear the obstruction. his machine ended up flipped over. with his telemetry system readin.ll 130 mph. Steinhausen. trapped under his machine for some time. re-injured his already painful back. while passenger Trevor Hopkins lost skin from his right arm and broke his toe. The race winner, Abbott. was a lowly sixth on lap one but rode superbly in difficult track conditions to score a popular win - his first of the year. The van Gils boys scored their second podium finish of the year. this time on home ground in Holland. cue I e n e _ lIS SEPTEMBER 19, 2001 19

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