Cycle News - Archive Issues - 2000's

West. The next lap it was 2.348, and the race was over. All that was left was to decide second. Part of the answer Then the others began to whittle away, the lead falling to under two seconds with 10 of the 19 laps to go, Anthony West now up to second and the pursuing pack down to four. A lap later and the lead was under a second, West hot in pursuit and taking Yuki Takahashi, Manuel Pogialli, and pole-sitter Hiroshi Aoyama with him. came on the 15th lap when West lost the front end and slid out in turn two, the first left hand turn, the young Australian throwing handfuls of gravel in disgust. Takahashi was now in second in front of Aoyama and Porto. Aoyama passed Takahashi going into the first turn on the 18th lap, with Porto close enough to make a move. Then Takahashi nearly high sided in the hairpin, allowing Aoyama a slight bit of breathing room and Porto a chance to move into second. Takahashi took back third in the left just before the chicane and then took sec- With eight laps to go, Poggiali was up to second and just .381 of a second behind, Takahashi now third in front of West and Aoyama. Poggiali took the lead at the end of the 11th lap and appeared to be running away, Porto in front of the other three with seven laps to go. There were wholesale changes in the hairpin on the 12th lap, though not at the front. Poggiali maintained his grip and crossed the line with West, Takahashi, Aoyama and Porto just behind, Porto in danger of losing the draft. There was more activity in the hairpin on the next lap, all of it allowing Poggiali to gain precious time. When they crossed the line with five laps to go, Poggiali had his biggest lead of the race, 1.517 seconds over ond from Aoyama entering the final chicane. With a lap to go it was Poggiali by 2.169 seconds over Takahashi, Aoyama, and Porto. Aoyama took the spot from Takahashi entering the chicane and earned second by .123 of a second. Porto was fourth, .204 of a second back. KatoU date! with Alice Aprilia's Noriyuki Haga. Biaggi had some breathing room midrace, Capirossi having made a mistake on the sixth lap, running Spaniard Sete Gibemau rode a steady race to finish fourth on his Telefonica MoviStar Honda V-five. wide in the chicane. Then he started to come back, closing the gap on Biaggi to less than a second with three laps to go. Capirossi pushed to the end but came up just under two seconds short. "I'm quite satisfied with a new team and a new bike after four years riding the same machine," Biaggi said. "The character is quite a bit different. I need to get used to it. I do a lot of winter tests. Here we were not the fastest, but it was little off on the setup. Anyway the race was nice. I start two, I can take the second position, third position, then back to second. On the last chicane, the last lap, I went straight, because I downshift as always, but the clutch didn't respond as usual. And start to jump to go out. I could control the bike and come back to the same position." Biaggi said that they'd now seen the potential of the Ducati in race guise and that it was a "very, very fast bike. Maybe not 100 percent, but they can show the potential, and I hope they're not going too fast," he said. Capirossi thought otherwise. Getting caught out by bad weather in qualifying meant he had to start from the fourth row of the grid. Undaunted, the Italian vaulted into second in the first corner and began mixing it up with his fellow Italians. "For sure, I know all winter we test many different things, but the potential for the bike for sure is very high," Capirossi said. "We have a prototype bike, and we have many opportunities to develop the bike during the season. But anyway already at this moment our bike is for sure good." Gibernau was five seconds behind Capirossi and well in front of Bayliss, who Gibernau passed on the sixth lap and pulled away from. "I couldn't do any more," Bayliss said. "I was pretty consistent the whole race, but we're still missing a couple of things. I still don't feel myself on the bike." 2S0cc GRAND PRIX Telefonica MoviStar Junior Team's Sebastian Porto ran away at the start of the 250cc Grand Prix, holding nearly a four-second lead by the fourth of 19 laps, while the battle for second raged on among eight riders. Why Telefonica MoviStar Honda's Daijiro Kato crashed braking for the chicane on the third lap of the MotoGP race at the SKYY Vodka Japanese Grand Prix remains a mystery, according to a high-ranking IRTA official. "Basically, I'm just here to tell you that we don't know what caused this accident," IRTA race director Paul Butler said of the crash of the former 250cc World Champion. The crash occurred as Kato was approaching the chicane. Butler said there were "no particular marks on the circuit to indicate what could have caused the accident. We have obviousIy, as we always do in these circumstances, reviewed all the video evidence from the live broadcast and from the dosed circuit television cameras, and we are frankly none the wiser as to what caused this tragic accident to happen. "Fundamentally, I can't tell you more than that, other than to say that there is absolutely nothing special about this comer in terms of this circuit. It's an accident that could happen at any circuit in the world in a braking zone of that type." The crash left Kato in a hospital in nearby Yokkaichi with head, chest and neck injuries, including damage to the first vertebra in his neck. There were a number of theories about the cause of the accident (see main story), but none were conclusive. Dr. Claudio Macchiagodena, the Clinica Mobile medical director, described the immediate aftermath of the accident. "Immediately when the incident happened, the medical personnel on the track informed me that it was a very serious incident, that Kato was unconscious and in coma, and immediately he was transported to ambulance. "Reanimation maneuvers for cardiovascular have been perlormed in the ambulance, and immediately when he has arrived at the medical center, they have continued with this rehabilitation. What they realized at the medical center, both the Japanese crew and the Clinica Mobile crew, is that it was absolutely serious, very, very serious, and only very fast action for rehabilitation and recovering the beating of the heart, only the fast action allowed the recovery of this heart beating." After being stabilized at the infield medical care center, Kato was flown by helicopter to Mie Medical Center in nearby Yokkaichi. "In this kind of circumstance there's no diagnosis, there's only the intention of saving the life of the patient," Macchiagodena said. "What he can say is, today this was successful in saving the life of the patient at the hospital, and when he was transported to the hospital. his health condition were improved from what he had when he arrived at the medical center. "Once Kato was transported to the hospital, confirmation about the first impression at the medical center on the circuit about the serious injuries of the head and the chest and the neck were confirmed by the scans at the hospital. Everything was confirmed about the serious of his condition, and now Kato remains in intensive care, and he's fighting for his life. "The medical forecast is always difficult always to say, but we all know what happens with riders, and they have used us to give surprise, and maybe this is also the case, but the situation is that right now Kato is fighting for his life," Macchiagodena said, adding that he would try to provide updates if there was a change in Kato's condition. The crash was at least the second serious crash of the weekend at a circuit that came under fire from both World Champion Valentino Rossi and former World Champion Kenny Roberts Jr. Fortuna Yamaha's Marco Melandri broke his right ankle in two places and chipped his femur in a crash in practice on Friday. Rossi said he was going to write a letter to the series' safety director asking that the comer where Melandri crashed, which was not where Kato crashed, be altered. cue I e n e _ S • APRIL 16,2003 13

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