Cycle News - Archive Issues - 2000's

Endurance World Round B: Suzuka B Hour Jason Pridmore and the Suzuki GB Pha. . One team_rethe highest finishing team that contests the entire Endurance World Championship with an excellent fourth-place finish. Pridmore completed 119 laps, while his two teammates logged in 89 combined. It was a long day at the office for the American. RACE But as the field snaked around the twisty Suzuka course, the television monitors cut back repeatedly to the appropriately-named OVER Racing Yamaha, sidelined immediately after the start with engine oil leaking out by the barrel. ... With only a lone oil flag at the end of the front straight to warn them, Ito, Ukawa and Kitagawa flashed down the front straight and were lucky to miss the oil. The next five riders were not so lucky. Okada, Hayden and Watanabe all fell fast, and the three bikes and the three riders cannoned into the Turn 1 Air Fence at heart- After years of oppressive humidity and a typhoon or two, Suzuka served up a weekend of hot yet tolerable weather. When the clocked ticked 11 :30 a.m., the riders scrambled across the track to their mounts and scrambled for positions on the track. Ito took off from pole like a scalded cat, followed by Kenz J-Trust Suzuki's Kitagawa and Ukawa. The top three held position at the end of the Esses with a short gap to Honda's Tatsuya Yamaguchi and another gap to Tadayuki Okada, also on a Honda. Yamaha's Norihiko Fujiwara and Hayden were on Okada's tail, followed by Atsushi Watanabe on stopping speed. Yamaguchi rode his Honda on a wide arc and eventually met up with the Air Fence at reduced speed. Fujiwara rode off the track but was fortunate to re-join the race with only a minute lost. Anyone who witnessed the moment will surely never forget it. "It was unbelievable," said Hayden, shaking his head. "I never saw the oil flag because I was in the group and tucked in. Just as I tipped it in, I the Yoshimura Suzuki and Nukumi. Ukawa passed Kitagawa through Dunlop Curve to take second. Hayden passed Fujiwara going into Spoon Curve for sixth. Okada drafted Yamaguchi on the back straightaway to move up to fourth, and Watanabe did likewise to Fujiwara to move up to seventh. Later Hayden passed Yam- just barely saw the oil flag out of the corner of my eye. By then there was nothing I could do. Bam! It happened so quick - two guys go down, and next thing I know I'm sliding behind them. It's fast there. Turn 1 is downhill, sixth gear, grab a couple back aguchi before the chicane to get fifth. The Kenz J Trust Mojo Suzuki team led much of the race before their aforementioned problems in the pit that ended their race. 28 AUGUST 20,2003' eye • e n e vv s shifts and tip it in. Anybody that rides knows what it's like when you hit dang oil like that." '" was sliding and seein9\ dust and bikes slide into bikes," said Hayden. "It looked like a bomb went off down None of the fallers were seriously injured, surprisingly, though Hayden there, bikes everywhere and dust. The Yoshimura bike caught fire." burned his right hand and left arm in Hayden's team manager, Koji places from sliding across the tarmac Nakajima, and Watanabe's team at high speed. It looked much worse manager, Fujio Yoshimura, were livid. on television. "Right from the beginning every- ~DDD[JDD@DDD 1JDD@ D1J@ TitJJJ[f[JD~ U{f)@D@~ Thirty-six-year.old Shinichi Ito stunned the big guns during the one-lap qualifying Special Stage session to claim pole position ahead of the Suzuka 8 Hour endurance race. The Honda rider's time of 2:07.552 was good enough to give him his third pole position in Suzuka 8 Hour history. "I'm very happy with my time in the Special Stage," smiled Ito through a translator. "It was better than what I had expected. I am quite surprised and happy, of course." The two·time former champion of the 8 Hour felt the effects of age, but it did not show in his smooth and near-flawless ride. "In the warm-up lap my body felt stiff, so I tried to relax my body before the timed lap. I still made two small mistakes." Ito teams with Takeshi Tsujimura in his quest for a third 8 Hour crown. Ito's triumph added another dimension to the tire story at Suzuka, as his Honda CBR954RR was fitted with Bridgestone tires. It was the underdog tire manufacturer's first pole position in the prestigious Japanese race. "The tires were very good, fantastic," Ito said. "I have. been developing Bridgestone tires throughout the year for Honda, and I'm confident in handling the tire situation." Always at or near the top of the time charts on Thursday and Friday, the powerful Yoshimura Suzuki GSX-RIOOO was a mere tenth of a second slower than Ito today. Riders Atsushi Watanabe and Yukio Kagayama both struggled to keep the bike under control while coaxing more power out of the engine though the sweeping Dunlop curve. "In that comer I lost about 0.2 or 0.3 seconds," said Kagayama. "Watanabe made the same mistake in that comer - too much inside line." Starting alongside the Yoshimura Suzuki will be their archrival from the All Japan championship, the Kenz J-Trust Suzuki team. Regular rider Keiichi Kitagawa was 0.] seconds away from the red and gray Yoshimura bike, a return to form after being under the weather for the past couple days. "I have not been feeling well," acknitted Kita.gawa through an interpreter. "I have had a fever until yesterday. It was very hard to concentrate. But today I feel okay." Three-time winner Tohru Ukawa rode his boomy Honda RC-51 to fourth overall, nearly three-quarters of a second off Kitagawa. "My lap was no good, so slow," shrugged Ukawa. "Because of the ten tire set rule, we had no time to try qualifying tires. Zero time. But fourth position is not bad." An anime company-sponsored Honda CBR954RR leapt from tenth to fifth in the starting order thanks to a sterling ride from Yuki Takahashi. Takahashi-san tumed nineteen years old just two weeks ago. In sharp contrast, Honda's Nicky Hayden tumbled from first to sixth in the starting order with a time of 2:08.7J 1, more than a second slower than Friday. "We got only two laps of practice, and the track was a lot hotter today," Hayden said. "I went out and went hard and went 2:09. J and 2:09.5. Then I had to come in and 9ive the bike to the teammate. I thougbt, 'Man, I didn't really feel good at all.' I broke really early for Turn 1; it was just kind of my biggest mistake. When you go out for your warmup lap, you don't really get to go into Turn 1. I broke a bit early; that's my main excuse there. It was quite a bit stupid, really." Hayden admitted that when it comes to one-lap qualifying, he still has much to learn. "I did Superpole at Laguna last year - and I sucked at that one," he said. "I did better today, for sure. This one was, in a way, harder, because at Laguna you did practice and then stopped for hardly any time. But today I was last. From the time I got off the bike (from warm-up practice) it was two hours or something, at least (until my Special Stage lap). It was a little bit hard - I was out of my le.athers. Two hours of sitting and waiting." Hayden also admitted that Honda management gave strict orders not to crash, as they did not have a strong line-up of reserve riders for this year. "Before I went out, they made it pretty clear not to crash," he said. "They stressed safety first. Hearing that a bunch maybe didn't help," Hayden's mentor in MotoGP racing, Tadayuki Okada, was just 0.019 seconds off of Hayden's time. Uke Hayden, Okada rides a Honda RC-51 but for the Sakuri Honda semiprivate team. "I felt very comfortable, and my bike was working well. Everybody was very happy," glowed the semiretired 8 Hour ace. Behind Okada were a pair of Yamaha Rls in semiprivate teams. Rounding out the top ten was the junior team to Ito and Tsujimura. Corona Extra riders Anthony Gobert and Adam Fergusson went in and out of the Special Stage in thirteenth place. Gobert's Special Stage time was more than 1.5 seconds better than anything he produced in practice and qualifying as he continues to acclimate to the Suzuki. Fergusson was on pace to bump over a half-dozen teams down a starting spot until the exit of the tight hairpin curve, where he spun the rear wheel out from too much throttle input. "I screwed up coming out of the Hairpin," admitted Fergusson. "Lit it up, got it sideways, and it cost me a lot of time. I got on the gas too hard, too early. I know the Hairpin is tight and a bit slick about halfway out. I thought the tire would be able to cope with it, but once it stepped out, I knew I had done the wrong thjng. That's the way it goes sometimes. But Anthony 90t us a good time. It's an eight-hour race, and starting up another six or seven positions isn't going to change the outcome of the race." Gobert, on the other hand, was pleased and all smiles. "I was having a good time; I was enjoying it," he said. "I wasn't really sure what to expect - I thought I was 90in9 to embarrass myself, maybe. I went really slow, actually. When I went really slow, the bike didn't feel good, and I thought I was going to do a slow time. Then when I came in and the guys said I did a 2:09.9, 1 was expecting them to say 2:11.5 or something. I was stunned. I couldn't believe it. It was awesome."

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