Cycle News - Archive Issues - 2000's

OOMPARISON Manuel Poggiali's Aprilia RSW250 and Roberto Rolfo's Honda RS250R-W f it ain't broke, don't fix it. That's the message going out to Dorna and t he FIM from proponents of Grand Prix road racing's 250cc class after the way the 2003 World Championship went down to the wire at Valenciain November: The battle for the title between Aprilia's Manuel Poggiali and singleton Honda challenger Roberto Rolfo hinged on the outcome of the final race of the season there - the only class where that was the case. This nail-biting finale was in keeping with the fine traditions of the 250cc two stroke class, in spite of Aprilia's numerical dom ination of the grid, with over 50 percent of the points scorers in 2003 250cc GPs mounted on the Italian bikes , including six out of the first seven in the points table, headed by eventual World Champion Poggiali. That's the kind of dominance Honda practices in MotoGP though t he best the Japanese company could manage there in 2003 was "just" five out of the top eight! As for 250s, there has been talk of the " Aprilia monomarca" 250 class being scrapped after 2006 (w hen its continuation will be reviewed), in favor of a glorified 600 Supersport or even a half-liter junio r MotoGP four-stroke category. For many, the grand finale to the 2003 I season has countered that possibility - wishful thinking best express ed by Aprilia race boss Jan Witteveen, architect of Aprilia's proud panoply of 13 world titles in the past decade in both I25cc and 250cc GP classes. His quarter-liter two-stroke has been respons ible fo r seven of these, from 1994 onward (against two to Honda and one to Yamaha). "The 250cc machine is the best balanced of all the bikes," Witteveen opines. "The 125 could do with more power, and the MotoGP has too much performance for all but a few riders to manage properly. The 250 may have an image problem because of the decline of two-stroke streetbikes, but with 100kg (220 Ibs.) and 100 horse power, it has enough powe r that you must learn how to use it, and it's a good ste pping-stone on the way to MotoGP. It's impossible to simply switch straight over from 125cc look at the big class, and you see that the top riders all rode in the 250 class before they got there: Rossi, Biaggi and Capirossi were all 250cc World Champ ions at least once. Plus, it keeps the costs down because all the companies already spend so much on MotoGp, they can't consider developing an open -class 5OO/600cc MotoGP2 bike, and the rules already exist for 600 5upersport, which is also more interesting for them in publicity terms as a street pro- 26 We ride last year's World 250cc contenders to preview 2004 By ALAN CATH CART PHOTOS BY KEL EDGE duct ion class, and anyway offers lower performance than we already have in 250. So I'm sure 250 will stay after 2006 - we all need it." Honda seems to have reache d the same co nclusion . Though the Japanese firm's sole involvement at facto ry level in 250cc GPs last season was with a brace of breath ed-on RS250R-W customer bikes with wo rks tuning - hence the "W" - savvy Italian Robe rto Rolfo went one better than his third place in the title chase in 2002, with a stro ng tilt at the world crown , in spite of being outpow ered by around 10 percent compared to the quartet of factory Aprilias. Fourth in 200 I, third in 2002, second in 2003 - Honda will be hoping that the likeable Italian's seemingly natural progression toward the World Championship will be fulfilled in the coming season , with Rolfo joined o n factory RS250R-W machinery by Shuhei Aoyama, Dani Pedrosa , and the man who finished third behind him in last season's championship on a works Aprilia RSW250, Spain's Toni Elias. The coming season is certain to APRil 21. 2004 • CYCLE NEWS see the two manufacturers from two differ- ent continents going head to head once again for quarter- liter supremacy, just as they have thr oughout the past 15 years . That being the case, I jumped at the chance to compare and contrast their 2003 factory racebikes by riding them both in the weeks afte r that Valencia finale. I tried t he Honda fi rst, at the Cata lunya GP circuit, the n the Aprilia clear on the other side of Spain, at Jerez. It gave me a unique insight into their relative chances in the run-up to the new season that's about to kick off. In 2003, it was indeed Aprilia's lead rider Manuel Poggiali, from the tiny hilltop republic of San Marino, who decisively bested his Italian challenger Robert o Rolfo on the works Honda to win the world title in his debut season in the category, having moved up from the I25cc class, where he'd already clinched the world crown in 200 I aboard the Gilera. The Sammarinese teenager had unde rlined his worth by winning his first time out on a 250, on Honda's home circuit of Suzuka, then dou blingup with a victo ry in 40th Anniversary the next race in South Africa before Rolfo beat him in a race for the first of just four times all season in Jerez, in a race won by the third conte nder for the title, Toni Elias. Though Elias won more races in the 16round series than anyone else - five in all, co mpared to Poggiali's four and Rolfo's two - his last-lap crash just after grabbing the lead at Rio ruined his title hopes, and he was forced to settle for third place overall, behind the consiste nt Honda rider, whose bike's evident lack of powe r was redressed by his consistency as the only rider to score points in every round . But it was Poggiali's ability to use the undeniable performance of the rotary -valve Aprilia that allowed him to clinch the title - that and the skillsof his veteran tuner Rossano Brazzi, the man who took Marco Melandri to the title on the same bike the previous year. I hadn't expected to be able to squeeze aboard the voluptuously streamlined Aprilia waiting for me in Pit Lane at Jerez as easily as it turned out I could - because w hile this was relatively straightforward in

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