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/128323
...---. Max Biaggi (3) was in ,,,,,th e hunt for most of the race, not about to let Gibernau have an easy time of it. times we re close to Rossi's, and in o ne lap he overtook both Marlbo ro Ducati's l oris Capirossi and Ga uloises Yamaha's Norick Abe . Marlboro Ducat i's Troy Bayliss crashed out o n the second lap, afte r pushing t hro ugh from 17th on t he grid to ninth on the first lap. MS Aprilia's Shane Byrne fell heavily on t he first lap; d'Antin Ducati's Rube n Xaus on t he seco nd; teammate Ne il Hodgson had a strong run, and was lying se ve nt h when he retired wi th mech anical problems with ten laps to go . Pro to n's Kurtis Roberts retired with han dling problems midd istance . Earlier, Fortuna Ho nda 's Robe rto Rolfo too k a sta rt to finish victory in the 2S0 o f health o nly last week after sho ulde r surge ry in the w inte r, w as smil ing too. " It seems a long time since I've been on t he pod ium, " he said. " I co uld n't ride at the pace of Sete and Max, so I ke pt my own, had a battle with Valen tino and C heca, then got ahead. I'm looking for w ard to being more competitive as my st re ngth builds." Rossi blamed a lack of rear grip for his comparatively lackluster performance plausib ly enough, given his lap 12 adventu re, when the bike snapped sideways an d t hrew him way o ut of t he se at . Most other riders wo uld have been down. " I nearly crashed, so really I'm happy to get to the finish," he sa id. " Each lap I Hit's a little strange not to finish on the podium. The last time that happened was at Brno in 2002, when my rear tire (ai/ed." - Va le nt ino Ro ss i Hayden was less than t hree-q uarte rs of a seco nd behind Rossi after clos ing dramatically in the final laps. " I showed him my front wheel, but I cou ldn't make the pass stick," Hayden sa id. " But it's on ly my se co nd G P in t he rain, and last time I was I Ith, so fifth is okay." Checa hea ded Telefonica MoviStar Ho nda 's Coli n Edwards fo r sixth. "T hat' s the closes t I've ever been to hypothermia... t hey had to wrap tire warmers round me in the pit after the race, and fo r the last laps I cou ld hard ly brake or use the throttle," Edwards said. "Before tha t, I got settle d into a pace and kind of got stuck." Suzuki's Kenny Roberts d ro pped back 16 seconds be hind this pair, the last rider on t he same lap as the leader. "We're not yet in the same race as far as gri p and power are conce rned ," Robe rt s sa id. "At some Neil Hodg son (50 ) had a great ride goin'1' tracks yo u can hide it , but no t today. ru nn ing a s high a s seve nth before he re tired We have a lot of work to do ." wi th mechanical problems w ith 10 la ps re ma ining. Here he leads Nicky Hayden (69), Shinya Nakano was ninth o n the who ended up fifth, and Kenny Ro berts Jr. Kawasaki, but one star of the after(10 ), w ho finish ed eig hth. noon was Michel Fabrizio on the R1based WCM . N lowed to start because w as trying to be aggressive, but I thi nk we of his good wet practice pace even though have a gap to make up on Honda in wet weathe r. like I have always said , Max a nd he had not qualified in the dry, he finished Sete are going to be my main o pposition ten th in spite of fallingand remounting after for t he title ." his slippe r clutch caught him out. His lap race, skimming t he wet track to draw gradually away from Safilo Aprilia's Randy de Puniet after a first lap that saw defe nd ing champion MS Aprilia's Manuel Poggiali the first to crash out. South African GP winner Telefonica MoviStar Ho nda's Dani Pedrosa was also fast away, but he crashed out after fo ur of the 26 laps. The race was he art b re aking fo r Australian wet-weather star Abruzzo Apri lia's Ant ho ny West. Starting from the fou rth row o f the grid . he steadily moved through to thi rd , o nly to lose the po sit ion fou r corners fro m home to facto ry Repsol Apri lia rider Fonsi Nieto. "He co llided with me earlier when he passed me, then again on t he last lap. It pushed me w ide, and I wasn't able to get close en ough to have another go at the hairpin," West said . Pole starter Marco Simon ce lli claimed a first win in a d re nched 12Scc race, but the biggest lose r was Aust ra lian Casey Sto ner, who led from the flag and had built up a mass ive cus hion . T hen , w ith three of t he 23 laps remaining, he went o ff line to pass back-markers, hit a pud dle of sta nding water, and was down. " I can't believe it," Stoner said . " It was very d ar k, an d I couldn't see the water. I was go ing slowly, an d th e bike just flicke d me o ff," www.cy cl enEWs.com Briefly... Rossi's performance on t he Yamaha has surely trigger ed some technical action among his rivals - espe ciallyHonda, who is widely pre sumed to be working on furthe r upgrades to its RCV21 I V5, if not a rep lacement machine with anything between three and six cylinders. At present, the Yamahais relatively underpowered, with perh aps 15bhp less than the Honda, and some expect Rossi and his men willget their come -uppance at the faster tracks , from the Italian GP at Mugello (round four) onward . But the technical race will not be one-sided; Yama is also working on its ha own upgrades. The current "growler" version of the in-line four engine is not up to full power yet, according to Rossi's crew chief Jerry Burgess, with parts in existence that will hike the output. But they may not yet be ready to race. "We need for it to be reliable at its maximum pote ntial before we will use them on the track," he said. Cra nkshaft con figuratio n an d firing Intervals are more than only the talk of the GP paddock, with other manufacturers starting to follow suit, much as after the 1992 Big Bang revolution in the twostrokes . The first firm to do anything in publicwas Yamaha, with its deep-th roated "growler" engine , which must have been a powerful attraction for Rossi - the e ngine was already under way when he signed for Yamaha last year. It is tho ught to have retimed the crankshaft, probably by abandoning the conventional two -up/two-down flat-plane cra nk, and delaying (or advancing) the center pair of big-end journals byanything up to 90 degrees. This wou ld make the in-line engine emulate the off-beat firing intervals of a V-twin engine. This gives dear, if rather hard-to-understand, advantages in traction out of the corners, especially lower in the rev range. Suzuki is next, with its own retimed crankshaft for the V4 GSV-R. due for te sting the day after the Spanish GP. The original engine has the two crankpins for the cylinder pairs 180 degrees apart; it is thought that the new one puts the crankpins together - so-called 360-degree timing. O ne effect might be to reduce the engine braking that has plagued riders Roberts and Hopkins. Ducati isalso experimentingwith itsown rephased crankshaft. Its 36O-degnee engine fines adjacent cylinders alternately. Iv. first it also ran a "lWin Pulse" version,firing cylinders together, but there were too many breakages. It is now thought that it isbench-testing a version with the crankpins a few degnees apart. This wouid separate the double pulses enough to reduce the risk of breakages. Pro ton also had a firing-interval variation to test the day after the Spanish GP. The crankshaft isthe same, but new camshafts alter the firing order and inte rvals. "We have a big bang engine now, but I'm not sure it is the right kind of big bang," com me nted team owne r Kenny Roberts . They were also planning greater changes in the future, with a new crankshaft being designed that will change the intervals yet again. "It' s coming, but it takes time to build a crank," said Roberts. Other future changes include a longer stroke and smaller bore (another new crankshaft), expected to be ready for Continued on pa ge 3 , CYCLE NEWS . MAY 12, 2004 29