Cycle News - Archive Issues - 2000's

World Championship Road Race Series Round 12: Valencia Grand Prix Carlos Checa crashed on the wann-up lap and had to start the race from the pit lane on his spare bike, in last position. He managed to rip through almost the entire pack, eventually finishing fourth. more than a little over a second, and Katoh came back at him in the second half of the second part of the race. On the 11th of the 18 remaining laps, Katoh pounced, immediately opening up a one-second lead. From there, he eased away, adding greatly in the final laps for his eighth win. "When we started for the second even though the race was interrupted, had no change. It hadn't rained enough yet to justify such a difference in tire performance." time, Harada went in front of me riding very fast and I thought it would be almost impossible to overtake him: 500cc GRAND PRIX Katoh said. "But I finally made it, and I won." The earlier 250cc GP had been interrupted by a quick wet shower then restarted on a dry track when the sun reappeared. Not so for the 500s. The sky again opened up briefly just after the 250cc podium ceremony and the track was soaked. It was declared a wet race. Harada blamed his tires for his demise. "While the tires were new, the motorcycle worked perfectly: he said. "But once they started to go off, I wasn't able to keep my line closed the way it would have been necessary Only six of the 22 starters made it to the grid after the sighting lap, and they didn't all stay. The rest went back to the pits to make new tire to win. But ;;econd place is not a bad result for me at all, because I don't like this track." Nieto was in a fight for third with McWilliams and Alzamora. The bal- choices. Most went with slicks of some kind on the rear and variations on the front. One of the few to go with intermediates front and rear was World Championship leader Rossi. It was a conservative but ultimately illfated choice, with Rossi leading the first seven laps before his unrelenting march to 11th. "We had to choose a conservative tire solution, thinking of the championship, so we put on intermediate ance tipped in his favor on the 22nd of 27 laps when he left McWilliams behind. Then McWilliams came under attack from Alzamora, who made up a three-second gap on the Ulsterman with relative ease to take over fourth, despite suffering from the flu all weekend. "This morning, I even thought about not racing, because I was feeling really down: Alzamora said. Instead, he visited the Clinica Mobile for antibiotics that gave him a tires so we did not risk too much in the first few laps when the track surface was really slippery: Rossi said. "Of course, when the track dried, the other riders with slick rear tires were brief lift. "Seven, eight laps to go, I began to feel bad again, and from that moment on it got difficult to keep concentrated and constant." McWilliams later said that he had two problems, his tires and his motor- much faster and I just had to accept the situation and make sure I reached the end of the race and scored some points." The track dried so quickly that the lap times fell 36 seconds a lap during the race. Rossi's first lap time was a 2:12.896 and Gibernau's final lap was a 1:36.792. As the track dried and his tires wore, Rossi gave way to Gibernau on the eighth of 30 laps, Barros and Roberts filling out the lead quartet, cycle. Riding his spare RS-250, McWilliams found inconsistency in his rubber. "Today, a strange thing happened to me, the first rear tire that we had mounted had less grip than the second, even though it was the identical model: he said, "and even the track, S OCTOBER 3, 2001 • c: U c: I • ne""s Marlboro Yamaha's Max Biaggi got a tittle help from above to take the pole position for Sunday's Marlboro Valencia Grand Prix. The Roman was halfway into his record lap when a light rain began to fall on the 12 twisty turns of the 2.49-mile Ricardo Tormo Circuit. Common sense dictated prudence, but Biaggi soldiered on, his efforts rewarded when he knocked Nastro Azzurro Honda's Valentino Rossi from the pole with 3 minutes, 24 seconds to go in the one-hour 500cc qualifying session. The time, a new lap record of 1:34.496, would certainly have been faster had the rain not come. As Biaggi was taking his cool-down lap, the rain intensified, and Rossi, who'd just rejoined the track with fresh tires, was helpless to strike back. "That was tough: Biaggi said after taking his fifth pole in a row and sixth of the year [every pole position this year has been taken by an Italian rider]. "Halfway through that lap, I saw rain on the screen, which made me nervous. I can't tell you what I was thinking but I couldn't stop, I needed that lap and it put me on pole. I kept my head down, even though the rear was spinning up a bit, but for just one lap it was okay. We had been working on set-up for the rest of the session, so I knew that lap was my one chance for pole. We managed to improve the bike after this morning, but going race distance at a good pace will be a different thing from doing one good qualifying lap." Biaggi's best was well under Kenny Roberts Jr.'s 2000 pole mark of 1:35.133. Though the mark was fast, Biaggi admitted it wasn't a pace he could maintain. "The hard tire, which is the tire available to do 25 or 30 laps in the stronger compound, and with that the grip is not the same," he said. "So you cannot bank the bike the same way, you cannot try to open the throttle when you are maximum angle, so you have to pick it up and open the throttle. So in this condition is the goodness of your package. In this case, we are suffering the face to face against Honda. We know that. You can see it. I hope race by race something can change." Rossi was a gracious second, admitting that even if had the luxury of a clear, dry track, Biaggi's mark was unassailable. "I try with the soft tire in the practice and make a quite good lap time," Rossi said. "After we continue our work it ended OK. At the second soft tire it start to rain. Anyway, I don't think it's possible to make the pole position. I don't know if I have the best rhythm. This aftemoon five or six riders make more 35s [1 :35 laps] than me." In all there were 10 riders on the same second. Uke Biaggi, Rossi said there were tire problems to overcome. "We have some problem on the edge because we don't have grip on the edge and it's not possible to make better," he said. "If make better on the edge, after we don't have traction or the bike don't tum. It's very difficult. We start like this and we wait." Gauloises Yamaha Tech 3's Shinya Nakano, who won the 250cc GP here last year, was third on the front row, nearly recovered from a hand injury suffered at the Czech Grand Prix a month ago. "J crashed two races ago and broke my hand and the last two races were very hard for me," said Nakano, who, unlike most of the 500cc riders, lists Valencia as one of his favorite tracks. "Before this race I was really worried about my hand because I didn't know if I can push or not. Also yesterday I was too much thinking about my hand, but today I concentrate on my riding and I made a very lap time, so I'm very happy." Then came the third Italian in the triumvirate. West Honda Pons Loris Capirossi who encountered mechanical problems that prevented him from getting the full benefit of the session. "It was a difficult session because I wanted to test different set-ups to get ready for the race and in the middle of qualifying I had to go back to the box pushing the bike due to an electric problem," Capirossi said. "Anyway, I am satisfied because we could find a proper set-up for the Grand Prix. I think I couJd have improved my position even more, but the rain that started five minutes before the end, prevented me from trying it." Last year's winner, Garry McCoy of the Red Bull Yamaha WCM team, came fifth fastest with tire worries. The team had found a compromise between grip and slide by using last year's set-up. "Our main problem now is tire choice, as the temperature kept changing and we didn't get a chance to do much endurance testing," McCoy said. Repsol YPF Honda's Alex Criville was the first Spaniard to show in the standings, sixth fastest and upright after a crash in Friday's session. Criville saw Biaggi and Rossi as the pacesetters, with nothing much among the next eight. "I found myself in third position at one stage. I retumed to the garage for a tire change. and, before Jcould blink, I was down in sixth position," Criville said. On the front row for much of the session, Roberts Jr. dropped down to seventh with continuing consistency problems. "The bike is inconsistent and I don't have a good feel," Roberts Jr. said. "It's the same problem I had at the start of the year and we've had to set the chassis so it uses the tires harder, to give me more feel." Eighth fastest was another Spaniard, Carlos Checa, confident that the practice time was well spent. "We spent much of the session working on our choice of race tires," he said. "We managed to make the rear a little looser so it spins out of tums, which keeps the front on the ground and improves steering." The last two riders in the top 10, and on the same second as the leader, were Proton Team KR's Jurgen van den Goorbergh and Repsol VPF Honda's Tohru Ukawa. Van den Goorbergh had been 16th the day before, a disappointment for a team hoping the nimble three-cylinder would benefit form the serpentine Valencia layout. He recovered to take ninth after a late-night session of chassis modifications. "From this moming I knew it was better," the Dutchman said. "But I had a slower engine in the better chassis." Ukawa waited too late to improve his time with a soft tire and landed in 10th. then leaving Rossi behind. It became know the bike works with slicks. It a three-rider race, all three on rear wasn't working in the beginning. It slicks, though Gibernau admitted it was real hard; we were all really was a toss-up. scary. The first half of the race we "I just gambled and I said, 'Shit, I were almost highsiding, people crash- hate intermediate tires because it's ing, and we stayed on two wheels not either white or black. I'd rather go until the last 10 laps and I 'knew that I with one side or the other' so I said, had to do that to be able to put myself 'Shit, put some slicks on,'" he said. "I into position to win the race."

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