Cycle News - Archive Issues - 2000's

World Championship Road Race Series Round 13: Japanese Grand Prix (Left) Yuklo Kagayama (64) leads Olivier Jacque (19) early in the race. Kagayama ended up 10th In his wild-card ride with the Telefonlca MoviStar Suzuki team. (Right) Sete Glbemau (15) tries to hold off his teammate Roberts Jr. (11. Tohru Ukawa (11) and Shlnya Nakano. Glbemau ended up ninth, after running out of gas on the final lap. (Left) Noriyukl Haga slides out of the 500cc Grand Prixagain! "I was rather hoping they'd blackflag me," said McCoy. "But the points are welcome, even if the position wasn't." 183. Capirossi has 163, Barros 147, and Nakano 126. Jose Luis Cardoso was 13th, then If the 500cc race was procession· ai, the 250cc GP was even more so. But it was without the usual leaders came Anthony West's V·twin Dee Cee Jeans Honda after a strong ride that saw him with the slower V-fours for the early part of the race. "They were going fast into the corners, then stopping, so I was almost running over them," he said. "When they pulled a bit of a gap I was able to get into my own rhythm." He was the last rider on the same lap. Leon Haslam was 15th after a cautious ride to his first finish on the V-four Shell Advance Honda. The Vtwins of Barry Veneman and Brendan Clarke trailed in behind. Apart from the crashers, there were three retirements: Jorge Stigefelt pitted the V-four Sabre with 21 laps left; Jurgen van den Goorbergh managed four more laps before a cylinder head split and he retired in a cloud of steam. He'd been going well and up to ninth at the time, after switching to a 17 -inch tire in practice, and finding an instant improvement. "Today just wasn't our day," he said later. Olivier Jacque also pitted with brake trouble, with seven laps to go. With three races left, Rossi now has 250 points and a massive 67point lead over no-score Biaggi on 10 OCTOBER 17,2001 • G U G 250cc GRAND PRIX up front, after Melandri and Katoh departed with such violence on the sixth lap. Katoh had the jump from the start, but ran wide into the first corner, almost losing it under braking. Harada seized his chance, and Melandri also. They were still in this order when they crashed, and from then on Harada kept concentrating and kept moving, drawing ever further ahead of the field, until he had 10 seconds in hand by lap 19. By the end, he'd eased off a little, but still won by 7.5 seconds. "I didn't realize they had crashed until my pit board signaled the gap to the second rider," Harada said. "Now the points gap to Katoh is reduced, but it is still a lot. At least luck was on my side this time." McWilliams was the best of the rest, almost all race long; but Alzamora was recovering from a poor start, seventh on lap one, as well as overcoming the considerable difficulties of a right eye that would not close, and "was not producing any fluid. It looks like a joke, but if it hadn't been for the help from Dr. Costa, I would not have been able to race at all," he said later. • n .. _ •• The more things change, the more they stay the same. At least in the 500cc class. Motegi was in a puzzling mood, grippy in the wet but a bit slippery in the dry, and qualifying times were for once not significantly faster than last year. But the names at the top of the list were only slightly shuffled, with the dominant Italian trio all there, joined this time by. Alex Barros. Pole, for the third time this year, belonged to Loris Capirossi, after a final session in which it changed hands five times in the last 15 minutes. And the margin was impressive, almost half a second. Especially so since Capirossi's time was set on a 16.5-inch race tire, on a track in a quirky mood - grippy in the wet on the first moming, but strangely lacking grip when it dried up and warmed up on day two. "The front end is moving around a bit into the comers, but I won't change anything: said Capirossi. At this track of drag strips, "rear-end grip is more important, and I don't want to lose that," he said. Max Biaggi had been one of the earlier fastest men, and ended up second. A problem with his favored bike had forced a switch to the spare, he said. "The other bike always feels a bit different, but I went as fast as I could. It's going to be a hard race: he said. Barros was alongside, saying he could have been faster but for traffic on his fast lap clearly the Pons technicians had again found the best settings for the NSRs. Valentino Rossi never did have a tum up front. and ended up a close fourth after switching (like Biaggi) to a 17-inch rear. "It's half-a-second faster, but only for two or three laps: he said. "I will use a 16.5 to race." Shinya Nakano had challenged for the lead as well, ending up leading row two. "It's hard to pass here, so I really wanted the front row," he said. Alongside him was Kenny Roberts Jr., who had been fastest on the first day but was the only rider not to improve on day two • mainly because he crashed in the final session, losing his rhythm and costing time that he could have used to change the rear suspension link on his one bike. "We tried another link, and it was pushing the front. I was a bit too aggressive, and it got me." His teammate Sete Gibemau moved alongside at the end, but was stricken with such bad chatter that "it feels more like a motocross track than a road·race circuit." Olivier Jacque was alongside; Tohru Ukawa led row three from Jurgen van den Goorbergh, an out-of·sorts Carlos Checa, and Alex Criville, who was suffering serious rib pain after a trials bike accident before coming to Japan. Garry McCoy led row four, complaining long and hard about the restricted choice of tires - the softest available, he said, was harder than the one he used to race with last year. Suzuki wild card Kagayama was next, then Noriyuki Haga and Norick Abe. Anthony West was again the top V·twin rider, qualifying 18th, just one hundredth slow· er than Jose Luis Cardoso's factory V-four Yamaha. Brendan Clarke was 23rd, the last qualifier.

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