The T;r at
Heavy rains help give Honda its
ffrst post-Rossi victory.
~~
at a d iffe re nce two
weeks and a go o d
rainy day can make.
Honda's humiliation at
the hands of Valentino
Rossi was forgotten at t oday 's ra indrenched Spanish Grand Prix at Jerez, as
the defending champion, and new Yamaha rider, had at least one major narrow
escape and finished off of the rostrum for
the fi rst time since 2002 .
Long faces in the Hond a pits were
re placed with broad smiles as Telefonica
MoviStar Honda's Sete Gibern au led an
RC2 1IV sweep on the rostrum.
The home grand prix hero of almost
125,000 sodden fans had to work like hell
for the win, pushed almost to the end and headed tw ice - by South African GP
runner-up Came l Honda's Max Biaggi.
O nly in the last two laps, after yet another
lurid slide , did Biaggi slacken his pace and
settle for second , 5.452 seconds adrift.
Repsol Honda's Alex Barros inherited a
d ista nt third , 52 seconds behind the
leader, after Fort una Yamaha's Marco
Melandri crashed out with nine of the 27
laps of the 2.74-m ile circuit remai ning.
This elevated Rossi to fourth, but had
the race been a little longer, the result
might have been different . For the last
W
two laps he was fighting off the second
Rep sol Hon da of Nicky Hayden , the
American recoveri ng strongly after drop ping to 12th on the first lap after locking
his front wheel under braking.
Sources close to Rossi's team suggested that per haps he had been the victim of
a gamble that we nt wrong, selecting harder settings in the belief that the weather
would improve. Instead, it got wetter,
leaving him battling for trac tion.
"That was a great race . I had a good
pace, but the faster I went, the hard er
Max pushed ," said Gibernau. "We both
nearly crashed a few times, and every
time I looked aro und, I cou ld see nothing
but his yellow fairing."
After third at the South African Gp,
the win gave Gibernau a narrow lead
on points.
Biaggi was happy to be just
one point behind after two races .
" I've neve r been this well
placed in the standings," he said.
"I was always close to Sete , and
the gap kept increasing and
dec reas ing. Only at the end I had
a big slide, and I lost too much
time to make up again, so I
decided to save second place ."
Alex Barros , given a clean bill
28 MAY 12,2004 • C Y CLE NEWS
Gibernau gave Honda its
first win of the year, putting an end to all of the
Rossi talk, at least for
another two weeks,
