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(Abovel It was this tight at the front of the pack until the very end of the race, when Ross/'s (461 rear tire failed, forcing him to pit for new rubber. DalJ/ro Kato (741 fin/shed second to B1aggl (31 In his first race on his newly acquired Honda four stroke. front of a 38,OOO-strong crowd (the figure affected by recent severe floods in the country). It was the first win of the year for Yamaha, breaking a 13-race streak for Honda. The long-awaited turnaround came, ironically enough, just a few weeks after they had dispensed with the services of Biaggi at the end of the year, opting instead to retain Carlos Checa on the team. They might be kicking themselves, among the self-congratulation for finally bringing the Ml to race-winning condition, after Checa could manage no more than seventh. Second went to first-time Honda Vfive rider Daijiro Kato, a stunning debut after challenging for pole and following Biaggi and Rossi closely on his Fortuna Gresini Honda, only losing ground in the closing stages with a sliding rear tire. Kato also set the fastest lap, a new record, but was 2.7 seconds adrift at the finish, and five seconds ahead of third-placed Tohru Ukawa and the Repsol Honda, something of a hero after yet another heavy crash in morning warmup after hooking a false neutral then jumping into first gear at speed. Sete Gibernau was fourth, the Telefonica Movistar Suzuki rider also way exceeding expectations with a forceful ride from a ninth-place start, pushing through to challenge Ukawa strongly, before dropping off toward the finish with a sliding front tire. Then came returned injury victim Loris Capirossi on the West Honda, the first two-stroke to finish. Seventh was another hero's ride, by Jeremy McWilliams on the slow, but sweet-handling, Proton KR3 twostroke. Dropped to 19th after a few barging matches on the first lap, McWilliams spent the afternoon charging through with extraordinary vigor, dispatching more-powerful Vfour two-strokes and 990cc four- strokes alike through the chicanes. Sadly, the TV cameras quite ignored this thrilling spectacle, lingering instead on the sterile three-man procession up front. "If anyone had done that in Fl, he'd be a hero on TV," said disgruntled team owner Kenny Roberts. The race brought disappointment for Kenny Roberts Jr. and his Telefonica MoviStar Suzuki, back and feisty after surgery on his right arm. Instead of his promised best result of the year, he was bamboozled by setting problems, qualifying 19th, starting well and moving through to eighth, then dropping back to 11th with tire problems, caused (he said) by his poor bike setup. There was disappointment also for front-row starter Garry McCoy, who lost a lot of ground in the first-lap scrimmages and never got it back again - on a Dunlop tire choice that didn't work out. He finished 13th. His Red Bull Yamaha teammate John Hopkins, who qualified seventh but was showered by stones in the early laps by Ukawa, eventually retired. Biaggi was gracious in victory, saying: "It was not just Max Biaggi but also the whole team and the factory, so thank you to them. J saw on my pitboard that Valentino was very close, and I knew if I made a single mistake I would not win the race. I stayed calm and rode carefully to was done by Fortuna Honda's Roby Rolfo, with Telefonica Movistar Aprilia's Fonsi Nieto second, and Melandri behind. Nieto had started to attack when instead he slipped to third, then ran right off the track, lucky to rejoin out of touch. Then Melandri took the lead, only for Rolfo to crash out trying too hard to get it back. This attrition left second to Petronas Yamaha's Sebastian Porto, nipping past Toni Elias in the closing stages. Elias finished less than two tenths ahead of his teammate Nieto, in a demonstration of no cooperation. Once again, Safilo Oxydo Aprilia's Casey Stoner stunned the crowd and his rivals with a superb ride through from 20th on the grid and 15th on the first lap to fifth, passing and holding off Scrab Aprilia' s Randy de Puniet for his best result so far. The 125cc race restarted the season in fitting style, with a thriller pitting youthful vigor against wily experience. The latter triumphed in the end - but only narrowly, after a typically fraught last lap. Thirty-twoyear-old Lucio Cecchinello took his third win of the year, with 16-year-old Dani Pedrosa snitching second in the middle of the last chicane from Arnaud Vincent. Defending champ Manuel Poggiali could manage only fifth, behind yet another impressive Spanish teenager, rookie Hector Barbera, who had led several times in the later stages. Poggiali's points lead shrunk to just two, over Vincent. save my tires. I always look only ahead, but when I saw my pitboard that it was not Valentino behind me and I had a two-second gap, I knew that victory could be mine." Rossi's comments suggested that perhaps he had not really been poised to overtake, as it had appeared. "The bike had a few little problems ... this seems to be a Yamaha track, not a Honda one. I couldn't seem to make any impression on Biaggi. Then the rear tire went, and that was that." Ukawa said: "After the big crash this morning, I didn't think I would be standing on the podium. Then Gibernau was pushing me very hard. But J knew my bike was a little better than his, so I kept my hopes up." Gibernau echoed this opinion. "I've proved that we can ride hard and go for victory, and that we'll never give up. But I and my team can do no more than we did this weekend, and we're not here to race for fourth place. We need some help from the factory to improve the level of the bike." Earlier, a dramatic 250cc Grand Prix brought a seventh successive win, his eighth of the season, to runaway points leader Marco Melandri on the MS Aprilia, but only after he had bided his time in a three-strong frontrunning group. Most of the leading MataGP Biaggi and Checa got off the line first in a blur of red, but Rossi was in second place by the first left-hander, while behind them there was all sorts of swerving and confusion in the pack, with McWilliams and McCoy the biggest losers, as well as Nakano, who then fell off before half a lap was over trying to make up for it. The front three sailed on undisturbed, Kato slotting into third by the end of the first lap and staying there ahead of Checa and Ukawa until they started to drop behind after three laps. Checa later said: "We tried a different setup in warm-up, and I wasn't quite sure about it. Then I felt from the start that I couldn't match the pace of the leaders." On lap five, Ukawa proved the point, moving past and almost at once taking a bikelength or two for safety. Checa had his hands full with Capirossi, pushing hard. Behind all this, Hopkins - his radiator already leaking - had held up the pursuit, but Gibernau had overtaken Abe on lap two, and both he and teammate Roberts got past Hopkins on lap four. Gibernau was the one on a charge, however, with Roberts already suffering some chunking from his rear tire, and losing ground rapidly. Tohru Ukawa (11I/eads Sete Gibemau (15). They finished in this order, with Gibemau getting his best result of the year in fourth, and Ukawa finishing on the box once again. euellll n III _ so • SEPTEMBER 4, 2002 15