Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles
Issue link: https://magazine.cyclenews.com/i/128203
IRTA Jerez Test Preview: Gettlft2 Serious MotoOP is getting serious this season. This was the clear message from Jerez tests, the first meeting for most of the main protagonists for the coming year. Technical upgrades all around were illuminated by further experimentation in all sorts of areas. Ducati turned up for the first time and was spectacularly fast and on the pace from the off. Aprilia has been absolutely transformed by the acquisition of Colin Edwards and Michelin tires, challenging hard for fastest time of the weekend and ending up second, ahead of all but one factory Yamaha. The late-flowering Alex Barros has brought everything with him in his switch from Honda to Yamaha and ended up fastest on each of the three days of testing. The only fly in the ointment was the absence of not only defending champion Valentino Rossi, but all seven Hondas. They preferred to test in impressive isolation at Sepang. 'In their absence, the revised Yamahas, upgraded Aprilias and melodious Ducatis set the pace. the all-new Suzuki and the developing Kawasakis still struggling to catch up. At this stage, with more IRTA tests at Estoril. Catalunya and Suzuka before the opening round at the Japanese circuit on April 6, there were still more questions than answers. But unless or until Honda and Rossi squelch everybody's dreams, there is a hell of a future in prospect, both for this season and the years to come. And with a fitting soundtrack. Raising the noise limit to l30dS (from 120) has liberated the full noise potential: Ducati and one Aprilia ran unsilenced, Suzuki used only a tiny straight-through unit, and the Yamaha sounded less like a street bike than ever. The year to come has already broken some impressive records. Never in the history of GP racing have so many different marques been represented at factory level - seven, counting the Proton, but not the Yamaha Rl-based WCM; never has there been such a variety of machine configuration, with motors running from three to five cylinders, with in-line or Vee format. Even the V-fours are different from each other: Ducati is sticking with its trademark 90degree Vee angle, and Suzuki is at 65 degrees (from 60 last year). Both of these have different options for firing order, although by Jerez both had decided which to stick with for the present. Ducati has a melodic Ferrari-like "four-pulse" firing order, having abandoned the original Twin Pulse, which replicated a V-twin with adjacent cylinders firing simultaneously. Suzuki says its firing intervals are "still secret." The line-up is 24 strong, with seven Hondas and five Yamahas making up half the field, and two each of Suzuki, Kawasaki, Proton, Ducati. Aprilia and WCM. Riderwise, the strength in depth is awesome. Nine of them are former World Champions, while two of those are the cream of the World Superbike crop - Bayliss and Edwards, joined by Nori Haga to put almost all the world's best riders in the GP series. The new line-up also marks something of a return of American and Australian riders who dominated the 500cc class in the '80s and early '90s. From the USA, Kenny Roberts Jr. and John Hopkins have been joined by Edwards and new Honda man Nicky Hayden (absent from Jerez); while Australian Garry McCoy has Troy Bayliss and his own Kawasaki teammate Andrew Pitt to help carry the flag. They all line up for 16 races in a calendar almost exactly the same as last year, running from Japan (Suzuka) on April 6 via South Africa (Welkom), Spain (Jerez), France (le Mans), Italy (Mugello), Spain (Catalunya), the Netherlands (Assen), Great Britain (Donington Park), Germany (Sachsenring), Czech Republic (Bmo), Portugal (Estoril), Brazil (Rio), Japan (Motegil, Malaysia (Sepang), and Australia (Phillip Island) to Spain (Valencia) on November 2. Are there any foregone conclusions? Only the one - that all things being equal, Valentino Rossi and his new RCV211 Honda Vfive will be the man to beat. But who will be the man to do it? At this stage, there are two or even three clear candidates. The first is his deadly rival Max Biaggi, back on a Honda. They've already clashed at tests, and that's just the start. But much depends on the state of the machines. Rossi (and new teammate Hayden) will have full factory machines in HRC's own team, sponsored aga.in by Repsol. Biaggi is in the Camel Pons satellite team, and he and teammate Tohru Ukawa will be riding a production version of the machine. It remains to be seen just how different they will be, but both riders have already prepared the ground: Rossi said last year: "Honda always supply very good machines to the satellite teams, as we have seen - but if I beat Max, he will say it is because my bike is better than his." Biaggi, not surprisingly, has the opposite point of view: "Always in the past the factory Hondas have been better - as I found out when I tried to win the championship from Mick Doohan on a Honda in 1998." The other Honda riders will be ifI a similar bind. Although perhaps not all of them. Former 30 MARCH S, 2003' c u e I ... n _ vv s 250cc champion Daijiro Kato is an HRC favorite and can expect to get some special support from the factory for his Telefonica MoviStar machine. New teammate Sete Gibernau is highly unlikely to get the same favors. The seventh Honda, wearing Bridgestone tires, will be run in Pramac colors, ridden by exWorld Superbike star wild card Makoto Tamada, a OP novice. The other novice on a Honda is Hayden, of whom much is expected, but perhaps not just yet. So far his testing times have reflected his new-boy status, but his position in the main factory team suggests that be is in for the long term. What about challengers from outside of Honda? The favorite is Alex Barros, now riding a Gauloises Yamaha after jumping on the fourstroke Honda for the last four races of last season - and winning two of them. Now 32, Barros's late flourish looks like it's continuing, with the Brazilian fastest at all tests so far, overshadowing the nominally top Yamaha man Carlos Checa. At Jerez he ended up two-tenths faster than Edwards' Aprilia, with Checa half-a-tenth behind. Barros's companion in the Gauloises team is ex-250 champion Olivier Jacque, so far erratic in the big class. The factory team, now sponsored by Fortuna after losing Marlboro to Ducat;' replaces Biaggi with 250 champion Marco Melandri, so far (not unexpectedly) lagging behind teammate Checa in times. But not far. Today he was less than four-tenths slower, in spite of being one of several crash victims. The fifth Yamaha goes to former Gauloises rider Shinya Nakano, now taking Abe's place in the so far unsponsored d'Antin team: Abe has a full-time job on Yamaha's test and development team. The Yamahas at Jerez were updates of last year's Ml, with significant changes including losing carburetors to step into line with fuel injection and dropping the active clutch - the new fuel injection can be mapped to control engine braking without the need for this clever but complex peripheral aid. But this was still an interim machine, with the final version to arrive at Barcelona tests in three weeks, details still secret. There are other riders capable of springing a few surprises, given that there is still time for their bikes to improve before the start of the season proper. The Aprilia already has improved hugely, and Edwards must be regarded as a credible threat to Rossi. He is one reason for the boost. The World Superbike Champion appears to have gelled almost instantly with the bike and the team, bringing the mindset of a winner as well as a depth of analytical ability. The other is the switch to Michelin tires, which are as superior to Dunlops in this class as the Dunlops are on 250s. His teammate is Nori Haga, whose previous GP experiences on a two-stroke were disappointing. but who has a new lease on life on the Cube. Haga crashed twice on the last day of tests, ending up ninth fastest, sandwiched between the Suzukis. Suzuki's new bike looks good but was also suffering from youth. This was the third test after the completely redesigned V-four machine arrived in January, and Kenny Roberts Jr. was still hunting for the base settings that will allow the bike to achieve its obviously improved potential. New teammate John Hopkins reported some progress in that area at Jerez; Suzuki has promised a major power upgrade before the Catalunya tests. The Ducatis garnered more than their fair share of interest - reflecting their status within motorcycling and a tribute to the fine looks. sound and power of the Desmosedici. loris Capirossi had been the faster of the pair but crashed twice today. Bayliss edged ahead of him, placing a highly impressive fourth, working hard and running lots of laps as he gets used to his new task. Is the bike a potential winner in its first year? Well, it's damned good for a first attempt, and there is another version to come - the final race bike. We shall see. Kawasaki had not only its pair of Australian riders - Garry McCoy and Andrew Pitt - at Jerez, but also factory testers Alex Hofmann and Akira Yanagawa. The scale of the task ahead of them was big - they were consistently the slowest of the MotoGP machines and are still at an early stage, with constant chassis changes. They alone use Dunlop tires, a drawback at the moment, though both Kawasaki and Dunlop hope they will climb the learning curve rapidly after losing ground seriously in recent years. The remaining contenders were absent from Jerez, each scrabbling to get its machines ready for the fast.approaching season. Proton's new V·five has been running on the bench, but is far from trouble·free so far and not yet ready to take to the track. Barring major setbacks. it will be ready for the first race, promised team owner Kenny Roberts, but probably not fully race ready, if you take the distinction. Riders Jeremy McWilliams and Nobu Aoki are meantime sitting on their hands. At the other end of the scale, the WCM team's project to turn the streetbike R1 Yamaha into a MotoOP prototype has not yet yielded a motorbike on the track. Riders Ralf Waldmann and Chris Bums await first tests with considerable interest. The Jerez tests, in the absence of Honda, were a phony war. But they promised much for the real one.