Cycle News - Archive Issues - 2000's

World Championship Road Race Series Round 4: Le Mans Circuit u!JD@ 5jffLJD@f?D@&JrJiJ ©@rJiJ{]DrJiJ~:.-<--@_rJiJ_{] ers. "On the sighting lap, before the start of the second heat, 1 immediately realized that the mixed tires I'd _ On the seventh lap of the race that didn't count, the stars, the American ones at least, all lined up_ It was the first time the new wave of American GP stars rode in formation - Repsol Honda's Nicky Hayden in front of Suzuki's John Hopkins and Kenny Roberts Jr., and Alice Aprilia's Colin Edwards. Hayden and Hopkins had battled in the United States two years ago, and Edwards and Roberts Jr. had done the same 11 years ago, but this was the first time the four were together, in order, on the same track. It wouldn't last, and they would have diverging fortunes, though the best wasn't that good, and the worst was very bad. When rain brought a halt to the race, on the 16th lap, Roberts Jr. was in 11 th, two spots ahead of Edwards, with Hayden one place in front of Hopkins in 16th. Tire choice was critical in the 13-lap finale, and only Edwards had the right combination. It added up to a 10th-place finish. The problem was that his choice of setup was wrong, so he could only watch the leaders pull away. 41Two races in a row that we've screwed ourselves lookjng for rear traction," Edwards said. "Jerez [the Spanish GPj we changed the front to make the rear better and screwed it all up. We came back here and said the front's back to where we want it, and what do we do again? We change the front to make the rear better. You'd think we'd learn. We tried something completely different than we even know parameters of this morning. Way different than what we'd normally run." His teammate Noriyuki Haga ran in front of Edwards both wet and dry. Haga, who'd raced here before, chose a 17-inch front tire. Edwards prefers the 16.5 and never had time to test the 17. Roberts Jr., Hayden and Hopkins aU chose intermediate rears. "Even before the warm-up lap. I had no grip," Roberts Jr. said after fmishing 16th, two laps down on race winner Sete Gibernau. '" was influenced more than anything. Too much jabbering going on, and I got persuaded into the wrong choice. Honestly, we have to take those gambles if we want to do any good. [Tohrul Ukawa was [seventhj. Am I going to beat Ukawa on race tires or rain tires? I don't think so. It's like if you put our two bikes together, there's no way I'm going to beat him on the same stuff." Roberts and the team were hoping it would dry out. "It was a gamble that didn't pay off," Roberts said. At that point, "You either ride around and try to fmish eighth or ninth or go for a gamble and see if something pays off," he continued. "It didn't payoff. That's the way it goes sometimes." Overall, Roberts Jr. was more upbeat than he's been of late about the Suzuki GSV-R. "We were going okay the first race for Suzuki: he said. "It's disappointing for me because I know where I could be. You get kind of your back against the wall in these situations, and you've got to kind of go for the risky choice. You know it's the risky choice, but if you want to sneak stuff in and go for the one off, it's the only way to do it" Nicky Hayden's Grand Prix education continued on a day of rapidly changing weather. The Repsol Honda rider and his team changed from full rain tires to a cu slick rear just prior to the warm-up laps for the race. The sun was shining as he sat on the line, and it deceived him and the team into changing their minds. Others around him did the same thing. "I went out and did the first warm-up, and I knew it wasn't good, and I knew I could come in the pits: Hayden said. "But I didn't really see anyone else come in the pits who was with me, so I thought, 'Dang maybe I'm better just to stay out a bit.' Obviously, it wasn't the right thing to do and just was a miserable race really - just riding around the whole time" The Bugatti circuit at Le Mans came under universal derision for its lack of grip in the older section at the beginning of the lap. Hayden said he was "just riding around just trying not to crash, basically. The last couple of laps the little bit that did dry up you could start racing a bit. The last bit where it dried out a bit was all right, but turns two, three, four, I think I could have gone through there faster on a skateboard, I think" Race winner Sete Gibemau said he could have gone faster on a moped. John Hopkins ended the French Grand Prix weekend battered and bruised. The 20year-old Southern Californian crashed three times in the wet, including in the race, all of the crashes inexplicable. "Every crash so far this weekend. on the data, I haven't done anything different than the previous lap," Hopkins said, resting in his motomome after crashing out of the raininterrupted race. Hopkins was beaten up going into the race. His third-lap highside exacerbated a right shoulder injury and added a few others, including a broken big toe on his right foot and a pulled groin muscle. Sunday's crash was the result of a bad tire choice. He went with a cut slick/intermediate rear, antithetical to the rain tires that the front-runners used. "It shot out from under me, catches and threw me up," Hopkins said. "After all three of these, I'm bruised up head to toe and a little nauseous: Hopkins said he'd skip Monday's t"st at Le Mans so he could return to his base in Austria to rest. "I don't have any movement in my right shoulder," he said. opted for weren't the right choice and so decided to come back into the pits and change," Jacque said. "It was a decision that paid off, as in spite of having to start from the box, I was soon overtaking other riders." Biaggi completed the first lap of the restart in ninth, a position he didn't improve until the sixth lap. He'd started from the pit lane after realizing that his intermediate rear wouldn't work on the very wet track. Though he had a rain tire on the rear, his suspension was stiffly set for the dry. "If the race had been longer, I would have caught [Olivier] Jacque," Biaggi said. McWilliams was the fastest rider in Saturday's wet qualifying session by nearly a second. But today wasn't full wet, so he wasn't able to exploit the advantage gained from the lightweight two-stroke on Bridgestone tires. "The track was so slippery, it was the worst grip I've ever felt in my life, like riding on marbles," he said. "I was getting so much wheelspin it was hitting the rev limiter in every gear, but I was passing other people who had even worse wheelspin. A horrible race, but it was a good way to say goodbye to the two-stroke." Ukawa was next, just behind McWilliams and upset that he'd had to start from the pit lane. "We had a suspension problem on the grid, and this forced me to start from the pit lane," he said. "This really affected my race, as 1 never felt good after that." Still, he held off Haga. McCoy was alone in ninth, his best finish for the Kawasaki and the first one in the points. McCoy chose a Dunlop rain tire but had second thoughts on the grid. "From the back of the grid 1 could see all the tire warmers coming off the other bikes, and a lot of them had intermediates, not wets, and 1 thought, 'Crikey, here we go. I've picked the wrong tire.' We maybe went just a little too soft on the rear, because towards the end it felt like a slick, but then the Dunlop wets have worked great all weekend, so in the end we had the tire to do the job." 250cc GRAND PRIX Elias led off the start with the crowd cheering the pursuing Frenchman Randy De Puniet, both riders Apriliamounted. The two, along with Sebastian Porto and Manuel Poggiali, headed a pack stretching well back into the top 10, the order not changing until the fourth lap when De Puniet jumped to the front in the esses on 24 JUNE 4, 2003' II: U II: I e n e ... s the run-up to the start straight. On the sixth lap, Poggiali ran into the back of Porto, taking both out of the race. Poggiali claimed Porto slowed, unpredictably; Porto couldn't understand why he was rammed into the gravel trap. "It is clear Poggiali made a mistake," Porto said. The result of the crash was to allow the leaders a gap that would turn the remaining 22 laps into a tworider affair. De Puniet gave up the lead on the 15th lap, and on the next lap Franco Battaini ran off the track while in third, handing the spot to Sylvain Guintoli. Now out front for the second time, Elias took off, in short order gapping De Puniet by a second, then adding a little each lap to the flag. His margin of victory was 3.740 seconds. "Bit by bit I was able to open up an advantage, and this allowed me to ride more calmly over the finally few laps," Elias said. '" am very happy with this win because we are now second in the overall standings and just five points from the leader." The final podium spot changed twice in the final three laps after a pack of three ran down Guintoli, who'd had the spot to himself for the final third of the race. The fight among Team Repsol Telefonica MoviStar's Fonsi Nieto, Fortuna Honda's Roberto Rolfo, and Yamaha Kurz's Naoki Matsudo drove them up to Guintoli with five laps to go. They consumed him on the penultimate lap, dropping him from third to sixth, where he'd finish. Nieto had taken over third, but the young Spaniard was having vision problems that cost him the podium. "I am annoyed because I ran wide on the last lap because my visor steamed up, and I couldn't see," Nieto said. "Rolfo went past, and the race was over for me." Matsudo was the first Yamaha in fiM. I.e I.e _ ~ns Circuit ~ns, Rosulb: Frauce ~y 2.5, 2003 (Round 4 at 161 125 QUALIFYING: 1. Andrea Devilioso (1:43.565); 2. Youlchi Ui (1:43.743): 3. Jorge Lorenzo (1:43.947); 4. Cosey Stoner (1:44.203): 5. Alex De Angelis (1:44.315); 6. Daniel Pedrosc (1:44.437): 7. Lucio Cecchinello (1:44.510); 8. Arnaud Vincent (1 :44.522); 9. Hector BeTbera (1:44:570); 10. Thomas Luthi (1:44.638): II. Stefano Bianco (I :44.883); 12. Mirko Giansanli (1:44.891); 13. Gino Borsoi (1:44.945); 14. Mika Kallio (1:44.963); 15. Mesoo Azuma (1:45.031); 16. Stefano Perugini (1 :45.326); 17. Gabor Talmllicsi (1:45.480): 18. Pablo Nieto (1:45.541); 19. Steve Jenkner (1 :45.554): 20. Simone Corsi (I :45.576); 21. Max SllIbbl:ltani (1 :45.700); 22. Emilio Aizamora (1:46.007): 23. Fabrizio Loi (1:46.229); 24. Alvaro Bautista (1:46.363): 25. Gioele Pellino (1:46.503): 26. Marco Simoncelli (1:46.624): 27. Julian Simon (1:46.929); 28. Mike Oi Meglio (1:46.973); 29. Roberto Locatelli (I :46.994); 30. Alexis Masbou (1:47.588); 31. Jorge Petit (1 :47.616); 32. Imre Toth (1:47.709); 33. William Goutier (1:48.321); 34. Christopher Martin (1 :48.478); 35. Gregory Lefort (1:48.500); 36. Peter Lenart (1:49.165); 37. Xavier Herouin (I :49.522); 38. Leon Camier (I :50.678). ] 25 GP: I. Dani Pedrosa (Hon); 2. Lucio CecchinelJo (Apr); 3. Andrea Dovlzioso (Hon); 4. Casey Stoner (Apr); 5. Pablo Nieto (Apr); 6. Youlchi Ui (Apr); 7. Stefeno PerugIni (Apr); 8. Steve Jenkner (Apr); 9. Thomes Luthi (Hon); 10. MllSllO Azuma (Hon); 11. Hector Bllrbera (Apr); 12. Mirko GianSllntl (Apr); 13. Gino Borsoi (Apr); 14. Simone Corsi (Hon); 15. Roberto Locelelli (KTM); 16. Gebor Telmacsi (Apr); 17. Mike Oi Meglio (Apr); 18. Max

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