Cycle News - Archive Issues - 2000's

World Championship Road Race Series Round 4: Le Mans Circuit ing from the pit lane. The Frenchman and given myself and my team a realized on the warm-up laps that much needed boost," he said. he'd chosen the wrong tires and pitted for full rains. Camel Pramac Honda's Max Biaggi was a distant fourth, 28 seconds "In the end I achieved my best result since moving up to MotoGP back, after starting from the pit lane on rain tires. The American contingent suffered in qualifying, Nicky Hayden and John Hopkins both crashing twice in the same day on the slick bends of Le Mans' Bugatti circuit in Saturday's final qualifying. The grid was determined from Friday's times with Hopkins the best in 11 th place, the third row. By Saturday evening, the dry session was a long-forgotten memory. He'd crashed in the moming and again in the aftemoon, landing hard on his left shoulder. "I'm a bit sore, and I'm heading off for an X-ray now," said Hopkins, who tumed 20 the day before the GP weekend started. "This morning I was really fighting for grip, and on a real slippery section - the chicane at the end of the back straight - I crashed. I didn't think I'd done anything different, but the bike spat me off the highside, and I landed right on my shoulder. I was feeling pretty painful in the afternoon, but I went out to try some adjustments to see if we could get some more grip. I was trying a lot of different things. Then, as I shut off the gas to go into the comer after the same chicane, the rear suddenly went out from under me. I was fighting to save it, and I think I made the shoulder injury worse." Repsol Honda's Hayden crashed in the moming and again in the aftemoon. Up until his crash, the moming session was one of his best practice runs ever. He'd run as high as second on a track he'd never seen, and in the rain. "I just got a little excited," he said of the front-end slide that took him down in the moming. "Michelins have so much grip in the rain; it's hard to know the grip level." He explained that he was on a new tire and had just shut the throttle for the slow right when the rear hooked up and pushed the front out from under him. Hayden said he was "cruising around" in the afternoon session. "Going into the double right-hander, the slow one, after a little bit of a straightaway, I just got in, and as soon as I got on the brakes, the thing just went away. I crashed straight up and down just so quick. There was nothing I could do. Before I knew it, I was on my head. The bike was almost exactly the same. I was just getting up to speed. It was just one of those things. As soon as I got on the brakes, it just immediately... the thing went." Hayden spent most of the session in the pits, going out at the end for a few cautious laps. He'd been 13th in the dry session, dropping down from eighth at the end of the session. "It's been my problem a lot," he said. "The last three, four, five minutes of the session, I always lose a lot of spots. Just like this moming I was eighth, and then right towards the end, guys are really good at really right at the end. The last few laps if you're not going forward, you're going backwards. There's no in between." Suzuki's Kenny Roberts Jr. was next fastest American in the dry, at 17th, with a 14th place position in the wet session. Uke Hayden, Roberts Jr. was up the charts at the start before sliding down the charts. "The first run wasn't comfortable, but we made some changes to the ignition mapping and then just downhill from there," Roberts Jr. said. "We couldn't get the bike to respond to the changes we needed to respond to after that. We made a mistake, and then from there, we kind of screwed everything up. You plug that little black box in there, and it just doesn't seem to do that. Our level is so poor. Put it this way: We've got to be able to compete for the World Championship. That's what Suzuki asked me to do. That's why I'm around. I thought our situation would be better, especially after they built a brand-new bike. The rain would be worse because I have no control over the motorcycle. I honestly have never ridden a bike that I can't ride it." Roberts Jr. said the team's problems in the wet were the same as in the dry. His wet time was good for 14th with Hopkins down in 21 st. . "We already use more traction to go fast with new tires in the dry than other people require," Roberts Jr. said. "In the wet, it's much worse. We require more grip to do a dry lap time than most of the other bikes on the grid; therefore when it is wet, we are going to suffer even more." Alice Aprilia's Colin Edwards was having so much trouble in the dry that he said he wanted a wet race. He'd come to that point after a particularly perplexing weekend, the team unable to get heat into the rear tire. "The question I got is how, physically, is it possible that I'm behind somebody, exit of the comer, and I'm wheelying, got the wheel two, three inches off the ground, trying for maximum acceleration. and somebody's in front of me pulling five, six bikelengths on me with the wheel on the ground?" Edwards asked. "I don't know how it's physically possible, but it happened every comer. "It spins, but when it hooks up, it just wants to loop out. We've always had this prob· lem. More wheelie and not enough spin is the opposite of what Ducati's got. They don't wheelie a lot; they spin a lot At least with it spinning, you can steer the thing." Edwards changed his tune after a few laps on the wet track. "I just feel like it's the damn Ice Capades out there," Edwards said after Saturday's wet session." Here, it's like from corner to comer, pavement to pavement, you can get your knee down in certain ones. That's the thing, I've been riding in the rain for so long, every track that I can remember, I get me knee down in every comer. To me that's comfortable. I can play around with weight distribution from the rear to get traction. Whereas here, once you get the knee on the ground in some places, it's just sliding and going sideways. That feeler gauge that we normally have is nonexistent to say the least." Edwards joined the chorus of riders hoping for a dry race on Sunday. Even that won't solve his problems. The team's having a hard time getting temperature in the rear tire, and nothing they've tried has cured the problem. "The problem is, as soon as the tire goes away in normal conditions, instead of dropping a half-second, we're dropping a second and a half, which is not how it should be," he said. "So we've got a good two, three-lap bike at the moment. We've just got to work on the other 25." The various machine troubles have caused a condition in the tires that Edwards has never felt. "All the tires feel the same to me, which is uncharacteristic," Edwards, one of the most experienced of all Michelin's test riders, said. "Normally I can feel a rubber change or a construction change at the drop of the hat, whereas here it just seems that everything seems to feel the same and spin." 22 JUNE 4, 2003' cue • e n e _ s -.t., . c,....... ........,.IIo_.. ......, , TIle .-t M IIcCe, t8) tID 1IeIpecI ........ o.sy t •• of lis.......... 1t....... ......... IIcCe, Kat nil'" ....... sft g. "Although it may be hard to believe, I am not too unhappy about the race, because it can be considered a good result if you start from the pit lane and manage to finish Edwards, the first of the Americans, none of whom had a very good day. Edwards struggled with setup, finishing two spots in front of Repsol Honda's Nicky Hayden, who opted for fifth," Biaggi said. Proton Team KR's Jeremy McWilliams finished sixth in what's expected to be the last-ever twostroke finish in the premier class. Riding on Bridgestone rain tires, McWilliams equaled the best finish the wrong rear tire. Suzuki's Kenny Roberts Jr. also had the wrong rear tire, though by choice, hoping to surprise some of the front-runners. Teammate John Hopkins crashed out early in the race. ever for the two-stroke triple, despite MoviStar Honda's Ryuichi Kiyonari in his first race replacing the late Daijiro shagging his rear tire. "There was nothing left of my tire at the end of that race," the Ulsterman said. "No tread, and it was just a case of survival." Tohru Ukawa was seventh, like his teammate Biaggi starting from the pit lane but for a different reason. Ukawa had a rear suspension problem that affected his race. Eighth went to Alice Aprilia's Noriyuki Haga, with Kawasaki's Garry The final finishers were Telefonica Kato and his first race outside of Japan. He finished 12th, a spot in front of d'Antin Yamaha's Shinya Nakano, with Fortuna Yamaha's Marco Melandri 15th. Roberts was 16th. There were a number of nonfinishers, most coming in the dry segment. First out was Fortuna Yamaha's Carlos Checa, the Spaniard crashing for the third time on the weekend. The McCoy giving Kawasaki a top 10 finish for the first time in 11 years. "This result is great for Kawasaki highside appeared to be caused when he hit a damp patch on the track. and great for me," McCoy said after Loris Capirossi, who'd gotten the holeshot, pulled into the pits on the fifth lap with a quickshifter problem. finishing ninth. The last top-10 finish for a green machine was achieved by Kork BalUngton at Mugello in 1982. Then came Alice Aprilia's Colin Neither Marlboro Ducati finished. On that same lap Troy Bayliss crashed after losing the front end in

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