Cycle News - Archive Issues - 2000's

World Superbike Championship Round 3: Sugo . .Japan BRIEFLY••• World Superbike has. according to Internet sources in Europe. been bought back in its entirety by the Flammini Group, after a period of joint ownership between the majority owners Interpublic Group and Flammini. After the bulk of the SBK staff was relocated to Flammin;'s headquarters in Rome last winter, having enjoyed a short sojourn in the offices of Octagon Motorsports in London, a move back into exclusive Flammini ownership was always a distinct possibility. It now appears to be a reality. No official comment has been forthcoming from the SBK organizers so far. but now what they seemingly hoped would be a closely guarded secret is out in the open. World Superbike president Paolo Flammini (despite being at Sugo) was not available for comment at this time. but there have been no official denials of such a move either. A statement clarifying the exact position is expected at any time, although no SBK staff of any hue was prepared to comment on the development. fuelling the fires still more. There is a possibility that although the deal has already been done, there may be some contractual niceties to overcome before the news is made officially public. James Toseland hurt his right knee during a crash in a pre-race warm up. no more than a minute after the pit lane opened, when his Ducti sprung an oil leak, coating his rear tire and putting him off at turn four. With oil on the track the session was halted for half an hour. a less-than-ideal start to race day for all. With Sugo located a 45-minute or one-hour bus ride from most of the hotels in Sendai. a fleet of shuttle buses is employed to ferry the riders and all to and from the track each day. On Sunday morning, one of the buses was involved in a big crash with an oncoming car, and the 22year-old car driver was killed. The bus was on its way back down to Sendai and thus had no passengers on board. has made no comments on its future in World Superbike. Kawasaki is expected back with its new Superbike, under the control of the French-based current World Supersport team. and Suzuki is already there. Ducati may come back into World Supersport in 2004, but the relatively heavy 749 may not prove to be competitive at this level. and Ducati will have its hands full as much next year as it has had this year. Sugo proved to be a crash festival. even before Nello Russo's fall in Superpole. In the previous two years there have been 32 and 33 combined World Superbike and World Supersport crashes. respectively, at Sugo. and after Saturday the total in 2003 reached 30. In the first year of Supersport competition in Japan Gn 200m there were a whopping 64 crashes. mostly due to the hot-headed Supersport riders learning the tricky track's nuances the hard way. Lots of big names went down in qualifying this weekend, with James Haydon and Ruben Xaus both falling in the first wet timed session on two occasions. Haydon got an unwanted hat trick in the Saturday morning timed session, this time in the dry. and even Troy Corser fell twice in the second timed session. one a slow topple on the grass after overshooting the corner. Numerous measures and marks of respect were made to the memory of the recently departed Daijiro Kato at Sugo. A shrine. where the spectators could sign a book of condolence, was erected in the paddock. and several riders rode with a small number "74" on their bikes. Some also adopted black armbands as a mark of respect. After a couple of seasons of almost solid Michelin domination, even at formerly Dunlop circuits. it was brought to a sometimes crashing end in Japan. the scene of Michelin's worst-ever humiliation in 2001, when neither factory Ducati made Superpole. and the results were the worst imaginable. This year, Superpole delivered an all-Dunlop front row for what everyone believed to be the first time since Sugo 2001, and in the wet on Friday all the Michelin wets in the truck were simply too hard a compound to work in the lowly temperatures of a rainy and fog-bound Sugo, one reason for Haydon's and Xaus' frequent crashes, at least. some of which came when the riders were almost upright. A change in the way the various components of World Superbike - riders, teams. manufactures and organizers - communicate is in the cards. with a pOSSible slight change in focus for teams' representative Giulio Bardi. Already on the SBK Commission. Bardi is nonetheless currently employed by SBK. not the SBK teams association. The changes may see him employed directly by the teams themselves. which would give more control of the future rules. In the recent past Sugo has meant high-class wild cards - seemingly half a grid full of full factory machines and Japanese riders. The numbers have been reducing recently. and in the Sugo Superbike race only four were in place. Former double Sugo race winner for Kawasaki. Hitoyasu Izutsu is now a Honda rider. and the former World Superbike pilot turned up at Sugo with a full-on VTR1000SP2. running Michelin tires. His presence was not just a chance for Honda to rejoin the party temporarily, as he is testing parts on the twin for the SulOka 8 Hours race in July. IlOtsu will spend the rest of the year running a Honda FireBlade in the All-Japan Championship. evidently in readiness to test parts for the new Honda multi, which is expected to appear at the end of this year. Atsushi Watanabe, the 2002 All-Japan road race champion, runs a GSX-Rl000. while Noriyasu Numata will ride a Ducati 996, and Kenichiro Nakamura rides for the semi-official HRC Blue Helmets MSC team on another VTR twin. In Supersport. the immediately fast Ryuichi Kiyonari (BKM Honda) scored second in first wet qualifying, while Tekkyu Kayo. a competitor at the Suzuka GP race. rode a Belgarda Yamaha machine, specially prepared for him in Italy at Yamaha's request. A Japanese Supersport class appeared on the race pro9ram to entertain the crowds between the World Superbike and Supersport races. Kawasaki's pre-Sugo tests at the Japanese track of Autopolis proved useful in setup of the ZX6RR's obViously fickle chassis, with works riders Pere Riba and Fabien Foret evaluating a Kayaba rear shock during Friday's free practice but back on their regular Ohlins material for the rest of the race weekend. Simple rider ergonomics changes have helped the highly bike-sensitive Foret make the ZX-6RR suit him better. His handlebars are now lower and the seat higher. to give him the feeling he wants over the front wheel. Budgetary considerations meant that Team KlaHi Honda was sharing three mechanics between its two riders Robert Ulm and new boy Sebastien Charpentier. Charpentier. who was due to join the championship in Frederic Bolley's fated Motol team originally. finally got to ride in WSS again. after replacing out-going Klaffi Honda rider Gianluigi Scalvin;, who apparently lost the will to race in Supersport midway through the Phillip Island race. Ian Macpherson was lucky to make it to Sugo after only just catching his Right from Europe. Although anriving at the airport in plenty of time. the delay came from his not being in possession of a valid entertainment visa, a requirement for riders competing in Japan. With just minutes to spare and the plane behind held for him. he was given a break by the official and allowed to travel to Japan. David Garcia's crash was more painful and long lasting than it looked - and it looked like a sore one. The Spaniard was escorted to the ambulance. where he sat for around 25 minutes, surrounded by marshals who just stared at him and apparently laughed nervously when Garcia attempted to communicate with them. Desperate to have his helmet taken off. but unable to do so with both wrists damaged. he had to sit and wait until someone realized his predicament. Behind a steaming-up visor. Garcia eventually found a helper - who tried to take his helmet off without first loosening the chinstrap. According to sources in Sugo. Makoto Tamada will be a one-off replacement for Kurtis Roberts at the Infineon Raceway AMA Superbike race on May 2-4. backing up the regular Honda entry of Ben Bostrom and Miguel DuHamel. David Messori. from the UnionBike Yamaha team. was missing from Sugo, having been declared as injured before the race. He broke his right ankle during a track test for a motorcycle magazine and was not able to ride at Sugo. He may not be considered for a return. which may leave the UnionBike team down to only one rider. Giovanni Bussei. Two weeks before the Sugo race. Alessandro Gramigni won the first round of the Italian Superbike Championship at Misano. on another Rt. A lack of marshals on day one and water drainage problems which continued all through the second day blighted Sugo's copybook. The All-Japan support race sessions on the "dry" Saturday morning had to be cancelled when water was running onto an otherwise dry track from the surround~ ing heaVily cambered run-off areas. Several areas of the track had small rivulets of water running across them right up until Saturday evening, although almost all were in straights. A directive from race direction caused confusion at Sugo until the true meaning was elicited from the man responsible for the track procedures in World Superbike. Roberto Nosetto. The new ruling is that any race will only be stopped Gn terms of timekeeping) when the red flag is shown at the start/finish post. The aim is to prevent any possible repetition of the Formula One controversy in Brazil. The potential problem is that delays between the order to stop the race being given and all the red flags being shown at every corner could be considerable. Thus, now the clock will only be stopped the instant the timekeepers physically see the red flag being shown at the start/finish straight. irrespective of when the order was given to stop the race or what other red flags are out. The result will still be called by going one lap back from the one that is being run. but now there will be a definite point at which the stopwatches are halted - when the red flag appears at the start/finish line. With the results still counted back one lap there is no need for the riders to keep racing until they reach the start/finish line again to be classified - as many had feared. Another edict emanated from race control. reminding riders that an accidental cut of the tight final chicane in the event of a rider outbraking himself for instance - would result in that lap being removed from their list of qualifying times. The tire marshalling at Sugo left something to be desired in some instances. With limited numbers of tires available in dry conditions this year. each tire is checked by a marshal. from a list of nominated tires. which are ticked off before the bike leaves the pit garage. The Saturday untimed Supersport session. for instance, had the Yamaha Motor France tire check form on the marshal's clipboard bearing the handwritten name of .. Alstare." at the top. a potentially costly administrative mistake. With no notification coming that the second untimed World Supersport session would be declared wet (or maybe it just wasn't. despite the dampish track). the teams were theoretically only allowed to use their dry allocation of tires. Nonetheless Pit Lane witnesses saw rain tires and intermediates being used, a situation against the letter and the spirit of the new regulations - albeit each was a suitable choice for the semi-wet. semi-dry track. which only really dried in the sun after the session was finished. When the World Superbike circus returns to Europe, there will be an improved Paddock Show on offer for the paying punters to enter. So far Ducati, Honda, Kawasaki. Suzuki. Yamaha and eventually Petronas will have dedicated display areas for their race bikes and points of access to the riders. Fabien Foret chose to sit out of Saturday free practice due to the ever-changing track conditions. instead letting his teammate Aiba put in eight laps to gain setup information for the intermediate con- ditions. A surprising decision. considering Foret oniy completed eight laps in Friday's qualifying after a crash, two laps in. affected his rhythm and feeling on the bike for the remainder of the day. A complete engine change on Troy Corser's bike was under way less than an hour before Saturday afternoon free practice. which immediately precedes Superpole. The ongOing problems are due to the stage of development of the bike. which has seen practically a new version of the engine at each race so far this season. With each new version of the engine comes an issue with the fuel mapping along with increased power and torque figures. which in turn causes handling and chassis problems for the riders. This is the first track so far this year that the Foggy Petronas Team has not tested at. and they therefore do not have any data and settings for the circuit. Chris Walker sustained damage to his left foot in a crash dUring Saturday qualifying. After losing grip on a wet part of the circuit, he recovered but lost the rear when he accelerated on the way out of the turn and crashed, getting his left foot caught under the bike. After visiting the medical center, he was diagnosed as having a broken little toe along with a hole and skin damage to the top of his foot. "It's painful. but I am desperate to be out there racing tomorrow: I'm annoyed with myself about the crash. but it's just one of those things." commented Walker. The future was on people's minds at Sugo, with rumors flying about the direction of the series in 2004 and beyond. Honda in Supersport may field either four or six official factory bikes in 2004. with its Superbike plans all up in the air still. There appear to be three possibilities - a full factory effort and one or two satellite teams, all satellite teams for anyone who is interested and/or competent enough. or two fully factory titled teams. albeit run outside of Japan. Yamaha 26 MAY 7. 2003· cue I e ne1lVS James Haydon suffered an engine failure on his number one bike in Saturday qualifying. This meant he was only able to complete two laps on the ever-drying track on his number two bike. which had different settings. With wet track conditions on Friday. James has had very limited track time on a circuit that is new to both him and the team.

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