Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles
Issue link: https://magazine.cyclenews.com/i/128322
By MICHAEL IN THE PADDOCK SCOTT All Hail Rossi t didn't take Valentino Rossi and his crew lo ng to give th ei r for m e r employer, the Honda Racing Corporation, a black eye. Just one race. Ros si's victory at Welkom was a magnificent display of personal revenge, by a gigantic talent. He might easily be the greatest motorcycle racer of all time. What this means to history is epochal. What it means to the here-and-now is less encouraging. Ifhe finds it so simple to accomplish a task tha t many (myself included) thought would take at least half a season, what hope is there for the exciting MotoG P season we'd been expecting? Unless you get excited by a battle for second . One race doesn't I sports car for the fastest man at Catalunya tests . Rossi won it. All the time, he'd been answering the third... is the Yamaha MI really that bad a bike? No, especially with the updated growler engine and latest chassis. After all, the marg ins are small in racing, between a wonderful bike and one that its crestfallen riders willcriticize as a piece of cra p. (A similar demonstration of this truth has come from Suzuki and and for fans w ho might have been hoping for a bit of variety, after rather too many years of races with a predictable winner. Sure, the rivals can get better - Colin Edwards might hunt down the crippling chatter problem that ruined him in South Africa; the Ducatis might get closer on set up, so as to use their imposing speed potential at faster tracks; Alex Barros might soon feel well enough recovered from his shoulder injuries to pull out a few more stops. African race, so meth ing str ange happened. The orange-accented racers which previously looked absolutely like the real thing somehow started to look a bit second-rate because of Rossi's absence - the orange w heels that we re once dead cool now looked rather cheap and gaudy instead. Quite how this made Rossi's old team feel can easily be imagined. Likewise the turmoil of emotions at HRC. They've always been able to believe that it is their At the same time, Honda might also come up with somethi ng. It st ill denies the existence of a V-three, or any other secret weapon. But after the embarrassing defeat in South Africa, we might see that it has a bit more up its sleeve for the RCV211. But it's all ifs and buts. And if these riders and their machines have room to improve, so too do Rossi and his Yamaha. In fact, he left them all looking pretty stupid. It took a while to get used to seeing Repsol Hondas without Rossi on one of them, but over the course of the South machine that has dominated the new fo ur-stro ke class. In just one weekend, Rossi proved that the really special thing was the rider. A bleak prospect indeed. To be brutal, the best his rivals can hope for is that the dem igod will indeed find the "rather nervous" Yamaha too much of a handful at some point in the near future, crash, and miss a couple of races through injury. And not even Biaggi, or the face-losing bosses at HRC, wou ld hope for that . Not out loud, anyway. REIGNING IN SOUTH AFRICA make a season, of course, but the way Rossi dominated the weekend was pretty telling. Fastest from the start of practice, he confounded predictions of prob lems over race distance by first holding an on-form Max Biaggi at bay, then firmly (if only narrowly) beating him in the lastlaps shootout. Even he said he was surpri sed . But surprise is a reaction that can only happen once. That's ove r now. When Rossi arrived in South Africa, there was only o ne question remaining - whether he and the MI could do it over full race distance. He'd already answered all the others, with admirable promptness. Could he turn fastest laps on a bike that had left ot her riders struggling (at least after Biaggi was dumped at the end of 2002)? Yes, he could. Not so surpri sing, really: "World Champion Does Fast Lap Time Shock!" Soon afterward , he answered the second - was t his just a one-lap flash in the pan? No . He could string fast laps together and still prevail when the going got tough . The first prize of 2004 was a BMW Kawasaki, especially the former. Changes to its previously downbeat GSV-R have been re lativelyminor, but the transformation in competitiveness is vast.) There was only the race distance issue to be settled. Could he sustain these fast laps? Wo uld he be rider enough to ride the Yamaha on the razor's edge for 45 minutes? Or would the extra effort and brinkmanship do him in? Well, now we know. Rossi doesn 't need the best motorcycle on the track to be the first man at the flag. It leaves a bleak prospect for his rivals, www.cyclenews.com CYCL E N EWS • MAY 5,2004 115