Cycle News - Archive Issues - 2000's

of the race after another, riding at an extraordinary pace - 1.6 seconds a lap faster than anybody else. The red bike was scything through, 15th on lap one, 12th one lap later, ninth on lap three, and so on. On lap seven, he slashed past Barros to take fourth, still 11.3 seconds adrift of Biaggi, but he hacked away at the gap, and on lap 13 was less than two seconds behind. Rossi was not aware of this threat, but made his own decision to take the lead. "I tried to follow Kenny, but when the rain got heavier I couldn't see the track. So I passed him, and the situation was better." That was on the last corner of lap 14. Half-a-Iap later, Roberts got the shock of his life as both Biaggi and Checa came flying past him on the back straight. "I had no idea they were so close," he said. Checa wasn't for hanging around and pushed past Biaggi on the next lap to start attacking Rossi at once. He tailed him onto the long back straight, dived past him under brakes at the end of it, and was still leading as they ran into the next right-hander. He never made the exit. "I was amazed at how fast I caught the leaders, and I took the lead because it was easier for visibility,he said later. "I was feeling comfortable, and I went into the corner the same as always. I was concentrating on the front grip, but the back let go. I don't know why." From then on, Biaggi kept Rossi honest, and they finished just 1.6 seconds apart. Roberts had dropped back, saying later: "As the fuel load lightened, and with the clutch dragging the back down, I couldn't weight the front as much as I needed. We still have problems to solve." But he was under no real threat from Barros, closing from behind. A little way back, Jacque had been ahead of Abe, but the Frenchman had missed much of warm-up with bike problems, and his wet settings were close guesses rather than the real thing. Capirossi had caught up from a mediocre start by half-distance, whereupon Abe moved ahead, with Capirossi also passing Jacque on the next lap, the 13th. They battled together for a while before Jacque gave up; five laps from the Roberts took the opportunity to give Rossi a shower on the podium. It was Roberts' first trip to the top three In 2002. The Nelson Piquet circuit has one of the longer straights of the year at over half a mile, and everyone expected this would favor the four-strokes to a huge degree. That's not quite how it turned out, for the circuit also has lots of fast, wide corners where momentum matters more than acceleration, and even more bumps. And a low-grip surface that punishes too much power with wheelspin. It's debatable whether the heavier bikes are better at ironing out the bumps, or whether they simply have more mass to get thrown around. The other two factors swung the balance toward the strokers, and at the end of a hectic final qualifying session, two out of four bikes on the front row were two-strokes. And one of them was the Proton KR3, with the slowest top speed of any of them. Pole went to Max Biaggi's four· stroke Yamaha MJ. He was in masterly form, dominating both timed sessions, and just going faster and faster in the final one. "I'm really happy with that," he said later. "This is not one of my favorite circuits, because it's so bumpy, but we've worked really hard to find the right setup, and then I really put my head down. " Once again, he was using the old chassis, while teammate Carlos Checa was on the latest version. Valentino Rossi had led both moming sessions and qualified second. But he was a quarter of a second down, and only got there in the closing minutes. ·We're not at 100 percent yet, but we can still make some more changes tomorrow." He would not be thinking about the championship or Tohru Ukawa's position, he said. "I'll just make my own race. and find out afterwards where he finished." If he were to win and his teammate finish fourth or lower, Rossi would be champion. Rossi's late run only tipped Jeremy McWilliams to third by three·and-a-half hundredths, and the 39-year-old Ulsterman was jubilant about his first front rowan the Pro· ton, and the fastest-ever two-stroke lap of the track. "I think that it's quite an achievement, on a bike that's more than 20-mph down on top speed," he said. The time came from haVing a good chassis and settings, engines running well, yet more progress from the Bridgestone tires - and a banzai riding style that meant he was able to tuck in behind Biaggi on his fastest lap, and stay there. "Stability under braking is superb - though there's nowhere on the track where you're actually stable. There's no way round the bumps. You have to plow over them. It's pretty ragged," said McWilliams. He complained about being baulked by Daijiro Kato on day one, then shamefacedly admitted to doing the same thing to Garry McCoy at the end of the last session. "I don't think he realized I was on qualifying tires on a hot lap," McCoy said later. Everybody else could see that: McCoy was also right on the ragged edge, skipping sideways on corner entry over the bumps and showing all the fire that has been quenched by injury for the past two seasons. His previous lap time was enough to put him on the front row again, just over half-a-tenth behind McWilliams. Times were very close, hence all the shuffling in the last 20 minutes of the session, with the first 19 all within 1.77 seconds (slow-coach Cardoso, on Riba's Yamaha, was four tenths slower, 20th and last). Checa had been ahead of Biaggi with 15 minutes left, and was on a lap good enough to retake the position from Biaggi near the end when it all went wrong on the entry to the last comer. The MJ started pluming smoke, and he shook his fist as he crossed the line on a very sick motorcycle that didn't even complete the next slow-down lap. It was his number-one bike, with the new chassis he prefers, and his spare wasn't up to replicating the time.s. "It's better it happened today than tomorrow," he said philosophically. "At least we know we have a good setup and can do the times." Kato was alongside. still less than half-a-second off pole; then an on-form Olivier Jacque, a previous winner here on a 250, on his two-stroke. Equally on form (at last), and also enjoying the Bridgestone upgrade, was Jurgen van den Goorbergh on the Kanemoto Honda two-stroke. "As we get to the end of the year, things get better and better," he said. "Now I have a chance to show what I can really do." Ukawa led row three, struggling somewhat with settings and less than a tenth ahead of Nobuatsu Aoki on the second Proton (he had been up to fourth earlier in the session). Then came Norick Abe and a struggling Loris Capirossi, who couldn't get the bike settled over the bumps. Teammate Alex Barros, in his home GP, was even worse off, another row back and J5th behind Shinya Nakano and John Hopkins; alongside was Kenny Roberts Jr., making progress with the new slipper clutch, but explaining that it still has some way to go. "I still don't have enough slip and the bike is sideways into pretty much every tum. I lose two or three bike lengths trying to get it back in line." Regis Laconi led row five from Sete Gibemau, Tetsuya Harada and Jose Luis Cardoso, Gibernau battling pain after dislocating his collarbone when he crashed out of the lead in Portugal two weekends ago. end, Capirossi finally managed to get past the Yamaha and pulled a little gap by the finish. Gibernau had been picking his way through after rejoining second to last after his first-corner incident, but the backshifting problem remained and it was hard work. He was up to eighth at the finish, some ways back, after II: U ..... passing the fading van den Goorbergh 10 laps earlier. The Dutchman was coming under pressure from Laconi's Aprilia also toward the finish, until the Frenchman obligingly hit a puddle and fell off while just two seconds behind, with two laps to go. McCoy was another 10 seconds adrift, with a couple of complaints. n • _ S • OCTOBER 2, 2002 13

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