and I was thinking t hey must restart the
race. When it carried o n, it just hit me,
and I cou ldn't believe it. Afte rwards eve n
Leigh Adams and Jason Crump were
complaining to Ole [Olsen] in the pits,
and I appreciate that they were backing
me . They had so many complaints about
the tapes, and they did test them . They
tried to fix them, but they were never
fixed properly, and I feel I have full
comeback on the issue.
"Full credit to Tony Steele, he is good
.cycl enews.co m
re fere e , but I have bee n penalized for
the ta pes' not worki ng correctly. I put in
an official protest, which means paying
my money [2000 Swiss francs] and wr iting a lett er. I also had a long meeting wit h
the FIM jury after the meeting."
O n a night that produced plenty of
passing o n a track widely acclaimed as
the best one-off circuit so far - but a disap pointing turn -out of less than 9000 Greg Hancock was o ne race away from
reaching the semis and blamed himself
for not doing so .
Hancock was second behind Adams
and in front of Crump entering the final
lap of the first semifinal, when Crump
wound on the gas to put the Californian
under serious pressure.
Hancock decided to try to defend his
second place and paid the price whe n
the Aussie caught him by the tread of a
tire right at the flag.
"I was kicking myself because I made
a very bad last lap in my semifinal,"
Hancock said. "I went to rid ing de fensively rather than my own lines, and I lost
it by two centimeters. It hurts . We had a
good night ot herwise. I had to fight a little bit, but everyth ing was going good .
My bikes we re fantast ic, and I have very
fast equi pme nt. I have said to every body
that it is down to me this year. It has
nothing to do with the equi pmen t. It is
the best I have ever had .
"I used all three bikes . The first bike
didn't feel too good after the first race,
the second bike bent when I crashed, so
I had to use the third bike. That ended
up fee ling better than the first two, but I
can't .afford to make silly mistakes like I
did. A semifinal to start with is not too
bad, but I had my eyes on the final, that
CYCLE NEWS • MAY 12, 2004
53
