Cycle News - Archive Issues - 2000's

~ Briefly... Gibe rnau (1S) stalked Checa (7) early in the race, eventually capitalizing an a mistake by th e Ya ma ha rider to take the lead for good. wo uld like t o have tried ." He had set a ne w lap reco rd as he closed up fo r that final attack. Rossi's fo urth was t he first time he has missed the rostrum fo r more than one successive race since the first three races in 2000, his first year in the class . "That was difficult - the bike didn't fee l right all weekend," Rossi said . "Especially under braking." He blamed stalling on the line on "a different feeling with the electronics." (Yamaha switched to Marelli ignition this weekend .) "W he n everything goes well, this bike is very easy to ride," Rossi added. "But here setup problems made it more tricky." His crew chief Jerry Burgess added mo re . "W it h the Honda, we had four hours of practice to fine-tune it," Burgess said. "T he Yamaha is changing a ll the time because of the development, and we just made a Ho rlicks of it t his weekend. We did n't have the fro nt fo r k settings right so he could attack under braking, w hich was our mistake. We'll probably fix it in half an hour in tests tomorrow." Ten seconds back, Telefonica MoviStar Honda's Colin Edwards prevailed in a race-long battle with Marco Melandri's Fortuna Yamaha, finally getting ahead seven laps from the end. He was not happy. "O n Friday and Saturday when the temperature was lower, the bike was fine ," Edwards said. "But today in the heat it didn't want to turn or hold its line." He blamed his rather eccentric choice of an ex -Superbike fro nt fork. "Now I know why it is a Superbike fork. I'll ch ange at th e next race ," he added . Ale x Bar ro s was t he be tt e r of the factory Re pso l Ho ndas , pulling throu gh to a lo ne ly seventh fro m a slow start; team mate Nicky Hayden was dow n in I Ith after an off-track excursion. Nicky Ha yd en had a terrib le ra ce after run ning off the track early in the race. He finis hed 11th . : I "The weekend st arted o ut so good," Hay den said . "The n it w as d ifficult to go forwa rd . Eve ryth ing we tried didn't seem to work, but everyo ne else go t faster. I lost a fe w place s on t he first lap, and then I guess I got a litt le fru strated, ra n o ff onto the dirt, and spent the rest of the race trying to catch up ." Troy Bayliss had his best race o f the year, starting out slowly on the Marlboro Duca ti, but picking up the pace to overtake teammate Loris Capirossi and fend off Makoto Tamada's Camel Honda for eighth. " I got going by m iddistance, and the bike felt as good as it had all weekend . Once I found the limit, I felt okay pushing hard," Bayliss said. Kenny Roberts was a d isgruntled 12t h. "The riding part is there, and the team structure is there," Roberts said . " If we had the stuff underneath us , but we need some new parts for engine performance and more grip from the tires." A first -lap crash eliminated d 'Antin D ucat i's Neil Hodgson, Ga uloises Yamaha 's Norick Abe and Suzuki's Jo hn Ho pkins, triggered when Hodgson highided right in front o f the other two. The rit suffe re d two broke n ribs . "T hat's the longest I've never been able to breath," Hodgson said . " It was m o re than a m inute, an d I was starting to panic." Ho pkins broke his left thumb in the crash; Abe was unhurt. " It's a waiting game to see if I'll be fit for the ne xt race, said Hopkins, who t urns 21 next Saturday. Both Kawasak is re tire d in a plume o f oil smoke, Alex Hofmann on the fifth lap (his third e ngine blow-up in two days), Team Ma rlboro Du ca ti are pulling last year's Desmosedici out of mothballs for back-to-back tests with the recalcitrant 2004 machine the day after the French GP. Team regulars Loris Capiros si and Troy Bayliss will test old vs. new at the Le Mans circuit, not (team manager Uvio Suppo insisted) with a view to switching back, but purely for information and research purposes . "The new bike is growing, " said Suppo. "We will not go back to the old one . "But we think it will be useful for a better understanding. And it shows that at Ducati we keep an open mind. The goal is clear... to be in the front, and we will do whatever we can." Suppo pointed out that last year at Le Mans they qualified third , eight-tenths off pole . "This year we are six-tenths away from pole, and ninth. It shows how much more com pe titive the class is this year." The new Desm osedici GP4 has an all-new chassis and a more powerful engine but has had a troublesome de but, altho ugh Caplrossi was sixth in South Africa. According to Ducati Co rse director Claudio Dome nicali, alterat ions to chassis balance to impr ove bra king have made the bike less sta ble in fast corners while increased engine power seems only to have made the already very fast bike less manageable. Has Honda made a specialsh ort-stroke e ng ine for its VS? In spite of repeated denials from all concerned , the Le Mans rumors just would not sto p that the factory Repsolteam riders Afex Barros and Nicky Hayden have had the benefit of the new motor and that at Le Mans points leader Sete Gibernau now has it too . Honda's smoke-screen responses to questions only added impetus to the rumor mill.An HRC spokesman insisted that all six Honda riders had exactly the same motor; another admitted that a short-stroke engine had been tested in the winter but that it was not being used at all. Gibemau's Telefonica MoviStar team boss Fausto Gresini was insistent that they had received nothing from HRC, but a factory man said that Gibernau did have "some factory parts ." Then he added that the re was no difference between factory and satellite team engines, exce pt that the factory team used SOO more rpm and had a shorter service life. The only remaining clue was the exhaust noise ... and ifyou tried hard enough, you could discern a sharper note to the factory bikes. Proton Team KR's VS MotoGP racer ce lebrated its first birth day with a number of engine changes. includinga new long-stroke engine that arrived for its first fitting to a motorcycle only on the first day of practice. "It's run half a day on the dyno, and it's been put straight into the bike. It's not really the way to go racing. Every race is a test for us," said team principal Kenny Roberts . The revised bore and stroke was "to make it less like an FI engine and more like a motorbike engine:' said Roberts . "Whe n the motor was designed , the re was a dispute about the dimensions. Some thought the longer stroke would be better, but we went for the shorter stro ke. I decided to build this e ngine earlier this year to get Continued on pas- 35 CYCLE NEWS • MAY 26,2004 33

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