Cycle News - Archive Issues - 2000's

:Briefly... want to push too much any more. I'm pretty pleased with that ri de on my Superbike debut." Race two was the personal property of Haga, riding his new bike like he rode his old Yamaha or Aprilia, front wheel lifting enough to exit corners with the bars flapping and looking just a little too fluid on some corners. He had o ne major moment that could have spoiled his day, but he recovered after his boot came off the footpeg. Small slip-up or not , it's an outstanding performance from a man who has had a troubled re introduction to Wo rld Superbi ke in a team that is still operating - like a lot of others - on a lessthan-fulsome budget . " I was a bit worried about the speed of Laconi in the dry, but when he went out, I was confident that I could win the race," Haga said. " It has not been so easy so far this year, but it was good to win a race at the first event. I hope we can move fo rw ard from here. " So m iracles can happen in the new World Superb ike world . Or do they? The general consensus was that the new Pirellis were okay, and despite the tires ' having no help in the grip stakes on wha t was at best a cold track all we ekend , the lap times were certainly shy of w hat the rest of prev ious Dunlop and especially Michelin riders were doing. T he lap record of Neil Hodgson, I :35.007, was left unkissed, w ith Haga going at a best of I :36.763 . Just the track conditions or a real indication of how the Pirelli world is compared to a three-way competitive one? Well , supplying 5000 tires on race day is a feat in itself, and this was such an extraordinary meeting, it 's almost impos sible to draw too many conclusions . Th e second outing may be a better indication of where the powerbases are in World Superbike th is season, with Toseland second, Martin a joyous third and Chil i fourth . Martin proved some poi nts today and achieved an ambition early. "To have the opportunity to have the pod ium twice in one day at this first chance is unbelievable," he stated after race two. "I didn't expect to get on the podium, and I had given myself until Misano." The CBRIOOORR, now only aO-percent complete (or thereby), is going to be a contender in the hands of Vermeulen, and he was fifth in race two. Walker, buoyed by his first-race ride , went seventh in race two, putting his more illustrious team mate Corser in the shade for once . Haslam is another with no fears anymore, and t he lad from Nottingh am could well be th e next Toseland. " T hat was an easy third in race two, but I changed the setting to get t he bike to steer, and I w ore out the front t ire," expl ained Haslam. " T hat was the problem, loc king the front on the brakes. So I'm o kay with th e results, but bo th could have been better." At the moment th ere is only on e Toseland, only one World Ch ampionsh ip leader, with 45 points to Ch ili's 33 and th e joint 25-point scorers , Haga and Walker. Marco Borciani (he does deserve a special mention for two so lid, solid po ints scores in fifth and eighth ) sits fifth ove rall, with McCoy in sixth place. Valencia has a real habit of either deliver ing a double w in or a surp rise result , and today it was the latter. The one t hing we did not get to see w as a typical 2004 World Superbi ke we ekend , or at least we don't suppose w e have. If it's as w eird and incidentpacked as this weekend, then whatever speed and level the racing is conducted on , it w ill be interesting and unpredictable at least. The Dutchman Wins There were really only going to be two potential w inners of the World Supersport race. As the Ten Kate team had dominated qualifying, had eked every last joule of energy from the champ ionship -winning CBR600RR, and as the bulk of their rivals could not match their pace, surely either Broc Park es or pole man Karl Muggeridge w as going to make it to the w inner's enclosure and the biggest bottle of champagne of all? As we have come to notice, things are not always as they seem at this peculiar little track in Spain, or th is class of racing where the few differences each team has over the ot hers sometimes merely magnify themselves int o items of great signifi- 16 MARCH 10,2004 • CYCLE NEWS cance. Parkes could w ell have w on. He jumped out of the bo x w ith a spring in his step and then fell befo re he had a chance to make what may have been an uncatc hable break in th e early laps. H is crash, on lap three, coincided w ith the jump-start notification handed out to Sebastien Ch arpentier (K1affi Ho nda), w ho was r ight w ith early second -place man Muggeridge - and loo king good for his own Honda silverware. A real serum w as developing behind Ch arpentier when he hit the front on lap five, and by the time M uggeridge had been svvamped by a whole phalanx of Yamahas and Suzukis, ri dden by Kevin Curtain, Fabien Foret, Jurgen van Den Goorbergh , Katsuaki Fujiwara and a few others, the race w as becoming an op en affair once more. Fujiwara was ri ding a new GSX -R600 for t he first t ime in anger and made the most of the new beast, run ning at the high pace of th e fully devel oped machines. It took until Charpentier hit the lead for him to notice the stop /go penalty, by which t im e he had been excluded from the event in any case. Bad luck, but t he camera never lies, even if Charp ent ier thought he had done no wrong. Mugger idge's gri p on the proceedings was slipping due to a spinning rear ti re , which reports suggest was one subbed by the FIM for the one he had picked out of the original bunch he was allocated - as per regulations this year. Losing grip from the medium compound ti re from lap four onward , he was to be ignominiously bumped into eighth place after Werner Daemen allegedly made unwanted con tact, and Muggeridge had to settle for a third of the points he had been expecting. Tobias Kirmeier had a big crash on lap five , by which time Triumph rider Craig Jones, Parkes, Giovanni Bussei and rookie Denis Sacchetti had all exited . Alessio Corradi, th ird here last year, was not to repeat th at no matter how fast The sharp, cold and biting winds that plagued practice at Valencia were constant companion for all riders and teams, but it appeared that Valencia's couple of hundred kilometers distancefrom the north of Sp ain was a crucial advantage. Pictures of snow plows charging through the streets of Barcelona, just of the coas away, filled t some wi th dread that the race would be snowed. asopposed to rained, off. Pirelli an nounced in a Saturday press con - ference the exact methodology of how the FIM will check its tires for complianceduring practice sessions and races . The p it lane will have 14 tire marshals plusa further nine technical inspectors andan FIM technical supervisor.This total of 24 people seemswell more than enough to check out which tires are allowed and which are not. In the rare but possiblecircumstance where a rider will have used up his full supply of tires in qualifying. he does have the opt ion of usinga tire he has already run in practice. Each tire will be kept in an individual pile for each rider until the races are completed, and aseachtire is signed by the rider and pit marshal, each tire is identifiable from source to return. Riders will be issued qualifiers, but only a couple each weekend. In Valencia most riders found that the track was so cold, the front qualifiers wer e not working, and they opted for th e softest race tire instead. Peculiarly, some riders preferred the hardest tires as a race choice, as they reckoned it was the only one to go race distance. In the previous six Pirelli tests at Valencia, none has been so cold, and thus all previous data was rendered something less than definitive. Air temperature at Valencia was chilly, but the wind chill pushedsome readings to subzero . Another new/old technology came into being in practice at Valencia, as Alessandro Velini and Mauro Sanchini both rode with perimeter-style brakes on their fourcylinder machines. Velini used the newer system from Braking, qualifying in 20th place. All 22 World Superbike entrants qualified, the slowest rider beingPortuguese rook ie Miguel Praia, on the other Xerox NCR Ducati. Having put his hand in his pocket to entice Garry McCoy into World Superbike in the first place, Stefano Caracchi, bossof the Xerox NCR team, hasalreadydeclared himself very happy with his acquisition. despite a far-from-ideal start to the season for most of the private Ducati teams. " I used to watch Garry on TV when he was a factory MotoGP rider," stated Caracchion Friday. "We could seethat he was a rider for Ducati. But he was not available at that time. He has a Hodgson 2003 machineand a 2004RS, and that machine is only for Garry. He really can win every race, if everything works okay. At the minimum we can stay in the top five. He can use the gas like nobody else in the world ." Giova nni Bussei, riding an SLDucati in World Supersport, madean appearance on Friday with fringed "cowboy" leathers. Blowing gaily behind him in the breeze as he hurtled along, his fringes were the latest in a long line of visual shocks the hirsute Italian has indulgedhimselfin over the years . 40th Anniversary I

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