Cycle News - Archive Issues - 2000's

World Championship Road Race Series Round 1: .Japanese Grand Prix 125cc GRAND PRIX Abruzzi Racing Team Aprilia's Stefano Perugini ended a nearly sevenyear drought, surviving a hectic last lap to win the first 125cc GP of the season. Perugini's last win was at the British Grand Prix in July of 1996. Matteoni Racing Aprilia's Mirko Giansanti was second, .037 of a second behind, with Exalt Cycle Red Devil Aprilia's Steve Jenkner 1.033 seconds back in third. Perugini was among the five riders who gathered at the front in the second half of the' race, moving up from fo~rth to take the lead on the 12th of 18 laps . ..,,safilo Oxyd<;?LCR Aprilia's Lucio Cecchinello made a pass for the front on the 14th lap, with the lead quintet losing a member on the 16th. Telefonica MoviStar Junior Team's Dani Pedrosa ran wide in the Spoon Curve, re-joining the race several spots down and finishing seventh. Perugini and Cecchinello swapped Troy Bayliss was impressive in his Grand PrIx debut, rldlng the new Ducat! to a fifth-place finish. Here he leads Makoto Tamada, the Japanese rider c:rashing out of the rac:e early on. The American Grand Prix The Americans had their own race within a race at Suzuka. Alice Aprilia's Colin Edwards bested Repsol Honda's Nicky Hayden in their GP debuts, with Team Suzuki's John Hopkins beating new teammate Kenny Roberts Jr. in a battie of struggling Suzukis. Edwards, who's never at a loss for words, was somewhat flabbergasted by the chaos in the opening laps. The Texan struggled to express the situation he found himself mired in as the race unfolded. "I'm Just so used to leading," the reigning Superbike World Champion said. "I don't know. You go and grab the brakes, and somebody passes you by 15 mph, and you go, 'Dude, they're going to take everybody out.' And then he gets it stopped, somehow. And then you think, 'Okay, then obviously they got their shit together,' so you got to brake hard like the next comer, then they all brake like 50 meters earlier. If you can keep it up the first three laps, you're doing pretty f*&%ing good. I almost plowed into the back of some people. I don't remember who." llIe race became even more a struggle when he realized the changes he'd made to the Aprilia Cube weren't working. "We ran it in this moming's wann-up, and it was okay, but we hadn't had any time on it when the tire got old, and once the tire got old, sayonara. I was out of there." By then it was midrace, and Hayden, who'd been passed by Edwards on the sixth lap, was back on him and soon to pass. Hayden, like Edwards, had found the first several laps a new experience for a number of reasons. "I'd never ridden the bike in that kind of wind," Hayden said of the gusts. "I'm sure there'll be worse wind, but I haven't been in any wind like that with a fuji tank. That's one thing that I noticed today. Both runs I had a fuji tank. In testing I had a fuji tank. But on this bike it makes a lot bigger difference than on a Superbike when you have a full load of fuel. " lbere was also the unfamiliarity of racing with riders he'd never been with. "It was about the weirdest thing the first lap or two," he said. "I Just tried to get as many guys as I could early." That said, Hayden was able to stick with Edwards, who had to work to stay in front, "He was really good pulling me out of the last corner every lap, and I'd chew him up in the esses," Edwards said. "It's kind of disheartening. There's nothing you can do once you're out there. It just accelerates and keeps the front wheel on the ground. That's the biggest thing. That's where the Aprilia's lacking. It accelerates, but before you know it, it's sitting on top of you." There were areas where Edwards was better, Hayden admitted, though he was comfort· able racing him. Their only prior duel came at last year's World Superbike race at Mazda Raceway at Laguna Seca. "Turn two and second hairpin on the front, he just had a little," Hayden said. "Just even though he's been in Europe a while, it still felt like an American style, kind of like I was used to. A lot of these guys, when you follow them, you can tell they grew up different. He just felt kind of normal." Hayden blew by Edwards on the front straight on the 15th lap, but, instead of pulling away, he made a few errors. "When I got in front of him, I thought I could go faster," Hayden said. "It was weird. Once I got in front of him, I didn't really feel comfortable. I made some mistakes and actually slowed us down. When I got in front of him, I slowed him down more than anything. Our times fell off." Edwards took sixth back in the second part of the looping left hand Spoon Curve, never to relinquish it, even though Hayden nearly equaled his fastest lap time on the last lap. 14 APRIL 16, 2003' c u e • e n • _ lIS "llIe last lap I showed him a wbeel into Degner Two," Hayden said. "I almost had him. I wasn't sure it was the last lap because there's no white flag, but I didn't get it quite as straight as I would have like to with my team, but I was pl:elty sure it was the last lap." Hopkins' struggles on the new SuzukI made him wish for a wet race. It didn't happen. Instead, after the serum of the opening laps, the 19-year-old found himself at the back of a pack that included Hayden. Edwards and Haga. "I Just stayed with them for about four laps and then started to lose touch there," he said. "Then I saw Kenny (Roberts Jr.) dropping back. He was quite a ways ahead, and he was dropping back. Just pretty much kept pushing, It was a battle between me and Kenny." Roberts' opening laps were frightful, including an evasive maneuver to miss the fallen OJU· jiro Kate on the third lap. Telefonica MoviSlllr Honda's Sete Gibemau outbraked Roberts down the back straight, and when they carne around the next IeIt, he saw Kato's bike go directly left into the wall, which Roberts pointed out is only a meter and a half off the track. "Basically when him and the bike hit the wall, they Just started continually like cartwheel· ing into the wall," Roberts Jr. said after finishing 14th, one spot behind teammate Hopkins. "And then his f&%$ing body came back across the track, more than three-quarters of the way back onto the track. And I'm trying to brake as hard as , can and move to the right, which is the inside of the chicane, to avoid his body. And the race should've been stopped. They just picked him up and threw him on a stretcher, which Is typkal around here." The problems didn't end there. There was a recurring transmission problem that caused him to find false neutrals and worry about getting rear-ended, coming on to the front straight. Then he accidentally hit the kill switch while trying to throw the switch to change his ignition mapping. "I just had a bad, bad day," he said. "The last couple of laps, I was going to try to get around John [Hopkins), and the opportunity never presented itself to where I thought it was going to be a clean pass. And I didn't want to take myself or John out. As far as I'm concerned, I got second, and John won the race because we're in our own race at the moment." Hopkins concurred. "Right now the bike is still in full development," he said. "I'm staying positive and keeping the faith in Suzuki that they'll come out with a competitive bike real soon. I think we can get his bike to perform quite a bit better in the next couple of races. I think this was a real difficult track to measure the performance of the bike.'

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