Cycle News - Archive Issues - 2000's

James . When I started to release the brakes, he was still braking, so I braked again and lost the correct line , allowing to Jame s to get a decisive advantage ." Had he been given much lo nge r, maybe another impress ive yo ung buck in SBK, Leon Haslam would have had them both. His mechanical partner beat his teammate Haga's 2-0 in regulation time, each 32-minute half proving slightly unequal as Laconi was five seconds quicker in the re- run , despite the higher track temperatures. And speaking of th ings that get too hot, the Petro nas triples may still have spicy flames exiting from their ex haust passages, but the new Petronas engine development team (Ricardo Engineeri ng now being in charge of its we ll-be ing in race trim ) had got the 900cc triple runni ng co oler and mo re consistently all weekend . That he lped the Chris WalkerlTroy Corse pa iring take what Foggy himself was later to call their best weekend ever, wit h fou r top ten race finishes and a mere shadow of the problems they e xperienced at even the last races, never mind the dark days of last year. Wha t they do not have yet is a power-up engine , but that is due to be rectified for the Laguna round. "I think the bike was as good as it was going to be here," Corser said . "The engine for the second race seemed better off the bottom, and I had changed gearing to the same as Chris had used , as I had been on the limiter all the way down the straigh t in the first race . I also tried to find new braking points, as I had looked at the 44 MAY 26, 2004 • telemetry from the first race, and Chris was braking later. I had bee n braking as late as possible , so I think t hat might have been down to the clutch , as the bike was definitely more stable on the brakes in the second race, and so my average top speeds were a lot higher. I didn't make it too easy for myself off the start and got bottled up at the first corner. When [Marco] Borciani was in fro nt of me, he was just pulling away enough that I co uldn't out-brake him, but he was actually holding me up going in on the brakes. I needed a run out of the last chicane to be on his exhaust through Parabolica so t hat I could outdrag him through start/ finish. We have had minimal problems th is weekend, and the e ngines were definite ly C YCL E N EWS more con sisten t, with bett er mapping too. So we now have a better base to move forward from , as this was always going to be our toughest round." Strange ly, it was Ducati riders, among them Steve Martin and Gianluca Nanne lli, who struggled for re liability in the punishing high-rev/high-Ioad Monza races . Rumors of ther e being a mem o handed out to all Ducati customer te am s on ly to use the ir lowe stmileage e ngines at Monza at least appea red logical. On e by one the Dukes fell on their locally produced swo rds. For the factory te am, no such problems, fuelling the paranoia of so me to new levels. Ducatis are after all mostly 104mm-bore engines now, just like the factory versions. Controversies or not , the proof, if any more was needed, that control-t ire racing and the blanket 1000cc engine rules have leveled things out in Superbike , came from gene rally unfancied Suzuki privateer Sergio Fuertes. Best remembered for taking his MIR Suzuki into a two-lap lead at Vale ncia on a home track only he could judge the safe speed o n, Fue rtes was an astounding sixth in race two, 41 seconds behind Laconi. He bea t the likes of local whiz DFX Ducali Borciani, who had an overall geari ng mismatch in race one and by his own adm ission merely rode rea lly bad ly in race two . Fuertes failed to make a single lap of race two. In the second 18-lapper it was Laconi and Toseland into the lead, Haga w ith them until he dropped back. Chili, slow to start but on the cha rge regardless, finally passed Toseland, only for Toseland to fight back hard, allowing Laco ni to break free of all pursuers. Chili was most upset about it postrace, but o nce free of Tose land, he made an error for himself by tipping off at high speed. With a problem as pleb ian as a broken drive chain when the lights went green high, qualifying privateer Team Pedercin i's Nanne lli prese nte d a significant danger to thos e beh ind, but des pite a few lose escapes, none we re injured except for Nannelli's unchanged points total. Despite Laconi's charging run ea rly on , some one-second per lap slow e r than Neil Hodgson did o n trick Michelins last year, and 1.3 seconds slower than Bayliss' lap rec ord from 2002 , his yellow shadow 40th Anniversary Ve rmeulen was only 1.365 secon ds down on Laconi by lap four. Even if the lap speeds were do wn on last year, there was some spectacle at Monza, a wonde rful place to wat ch one bike race around, neve r mind 20-odd. Speedway riding was the chosen art form for McCoy, Haga and the mos t con sistently Smo key Joe, Toseland. The scrap between him and McCoy was a drawn-out epic, w ith first Tose land then McCoy and the res urgent Tose land heading up their private battle. Alth ough McCoy lo o ke d to have Toseland beaten , and with Toseland burn ing his rear to what sho uld have been a bubbling crisp, he had two seconds ove r McCoy at the e nd and was delighted to still be only three points down on Laconi in the championship chase . So desperate was Ducat i to win, however, that its e ndof-day press release had what appeared to be thr ee headlines - on e for Laconi's double win, one for Toseland's double runne r-up spot and one for the 1-2 championship slot it now enjoys for the first time this yea r. Laconi leads o n 120, Toseland has I 17. The 86,Ooo-stro ng weekend crowd , eas ily the biggest and mo st vocal of the year, were desperately disappointed for their hero Chili, who stayed on 97 po ints and dropped to third . McCoy 's double podium finish puts him fourth with 87 . Verme ulen could be forgiven for being somewhat miffed by his misfortune to drop to fifth, due to niggling technical aspects of his sti ll largely streetbike mach ine. A faulty cut-o ut switch - especiallyon a bike that already has an electric starter anyway, is small potatoes after the beefy pe rformance of 2 1-year-o ld man and machine . On on ly 83 points, he could have been third overall, not fifth. It was one of those weekends though, and the delays in informa tion be ing passed to anyone about technical irregu larities and con stant points adjustments in the results was appreciated by few. The crowd , for example , left thinking they had the res ults fixed in their minds. Next up Oschersleben , at the end of May. WORLD S UPERSPO RT For once the Ten Kate team we re able to get a full reward for the ir seemingly peerless ability to put out fast laps for their leading airme n Karl Mugge ridge and Broc Parkes to soar above mos t of their competit ors . The re was so much more tha n that at play in Monza this year, as co ntroversy and judicial proceedings came into focus more closely than ever before in the new e ra of Wo rld Superbi ke and Supe rsport. We'll contain ourselves to the race action to start, however. Afte r securing

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