Cycle News - Archive Issues - 2000's

MOTOGP in a spirited if vain attempt to join th e party up fro nt. Rossi's lead went back and forth - 1. 1 seconds at the end of lap e ight , 1.8 seconds the next time (w he n the rain spattered do wn) , 1.4 and 1.1 over succeed ing laps. It w as on ly afte r half-dist ance that Rossi finally w o re Edwards do wn and started to gain ground steadily ; he was more th an two seconds ahead on lap 17, three on lap 2 1, and four on lap 24. Once again, we were watching a master at work . The first three were set in th eir places. There was some good fighting for fourth . Hayden had lost time getting past Capi ross i, but be fore half-distance he was back with Bayliss and pressing him har d. The Twin-Pulse Ducati's impressive surge out o f the turns made passing a hard jo b; w hen Hayden did suc ceed into the chicane on lap 15, Bayliss's usua l fighting spirit meant he had to work to make it stic k. He was still working at it three laps late r w he n Bayliss had his huge adven tu re , running off the track after rescui ng a fro nt -e nd slide at th e 120-mph C raner. He w ent barre lling acro ss th e grass at massi ve spee d - "I was telling myself, 'Just don't to uch anything'" - and it was a tribute to Do nington's law ns that he d idn't hit any bumps. He re-joined the track further on w ithout losing a place, now four seconds behind Hayden. T his wrapped up fo urt h and fifth. R055i Round 9 July 25, 2004 ~ World Championship Road Race Series T he star of the ne xt gr o up was pro bably Hopkins, 13th and behind teammate Roberts on lap one, and soon fo llow ing him past Norick Abe. Roberts late r complained that his too-so ft tire choice had become a problem from about lap nine ; by then, Hopkins had zapped past him and had then nailed Xaus, and by half-d istance he had caught Checa (dow n after starting all right, then slowing too much in t he rain) , and followed him forward to catch Capirossi and then Barros, Checa moving ahead pretty rap idly but Ho pkins taking a few more laps . Back To Pole Donington had been fully resurfaced since the last visit, but that wasn't the only reason for a massive improvement in times. Nor was the increased pace of the big four-strokes, though both of these played their part. The biggest reason was spelled "ValentinoRossi," his Yamaha back on sizzling form after a bad weekend in Germany, and his outsized ridingskills polished up to match. Rossi was second on day one, to first-time-fastest Nicky Hayden. On day two, he reallyturned up the pace, ending up not only a massive two seconds faster than last year's pole (by Max Biaggi), but, more impressively, almost halfa second faster than anybody else. It was his fourth pole this year. He could have been even faster, he said later, but for a little slipup in the last hairpin section. "I didn't think two laps were possible on the qualifying tires," he said. "But after the first, they still had grip, so I carried on." And went even quicker. This time, the track did suit the bike. "One of the things we need to improve with the Yamaha is that sometimes it is very good when you arrive, like here, [while at] other times it is difficult to get it right, like Germany; here , with the new, smooth surface, it is really good," he said. Crew chief Jerry Burgess was happy that this time an expected Yamahatrack had worked in their favor. "We have a little work to do to solve a problem we've been having with the back suspension sort of winding itself up, but overall we have a good base setting," Burgess said. Erstwhile title rivalSete Gibemau was second, but he was somewhat awed by Rossi's speed, not to mention his own pair of race crashes over the last two rounds. "It looks like we're struggling, both on the fast comers and in the sections with hard braking," Gibemau said. "But we'''l!still here and fighting, and I'm ready to take the challenge again." 16 AUGUST 4,2004 • CYCL E NEWS By t he finish, Checa had closed to withi n a couple of seconds of Bayliss; but Ho pkins had drop ped behind Capirossi again for eighth. "It 's not my best-ever finish, but it was one of my best-ever races," said Hopkins late r, able t o igno re the pain of his swollen left ank le once the adrenalin kicked in. " I knew in qualifying t hat on race tires we were goo d, though th e q ualifying tires were bad ." Barros was riding the bike he had crashed at high speed the previous afternoon, and tho ugh the bike had felt okay in The same might be said of Loris Capirossi, who was on the front row for the first time this year, as Ducati works hard to recover lost ground. What's more, teammate Bayliss was fourth-fastest, barely a hundredth slower than his teammate, though his "muscly," all-action style made it look as though he was trying harder. "This is where our season starts," said Capirossi. "There are still some things we need to improve on the bike, but overall I'm really happy." Bayliss had also made a jump in spirit and confidence, merely fiddling around with fork oil levelsand stuff, looking for better front-end feel. "We missed the front row by nothing, but that's what happens when times are really close," he said. And close they were, not counting Rossi, with Colin Edwards less than a tenth down, happy that at last he'd found a track where he was not plagued by chatter. First-day leader Hayden completed row two a similar distance behind, after being one of only two who failed to improve on his Friday time. "I stillfeel pretty good for the race - on my second run on qualifiers, I pushed the front real bad early on the lap," Hayden said. "That's the thing with these qualifiers: They're so good on the back that they push the front. After that, my lap was pretty much toast." Checa led row three from Biaggi, strugglingsomewhat after his victory a week before and blaminga lack of confidence in the front. Alex Barros was alongside, slowed by a high-speed crash in the final session after losing the front up the hill. Ruben )(aus, Whofell twice over the two day), led r0'iV four from Marco Melanari and Shinya Nakano. The former would not start after breaking a bone in his wrist on the first day; the latter was the best ofthe troubled Bridgestone riders, at a track for which their gu .ng tires had few answers ROlll! as next, ow Ke da. John Norick yne Byrne, the American also failing to improve. 40th Anniversary wet morning warm-up, "now it didn't wa nt to turn, and I had no feeling," he said. By the end, he was just going for a finish. Hodgson's 10t h was a long-aw aited re ward for a hard ride , which m ight have been better, he sa id , but fo r an e lectrical problem in th e low e r gears. Xaus was ne xt , thre e seconds behind; Biaggi was seven seco nds behind him. He 'd be en battling with an int ermitt e nt q uick-shift system o n the early laps, then changing gear manually for the rest of the race. Eve n with prote ct ive bo ots, this left his to es swollen and bleeding (Biaggi uses a road- patte rn up-fa r-down shift , and the backshifts had been an ordeal). Shane Byrne was t hree seconds behin d afte r his storming finish , once his Aprilia's fuel load had lightened and he had ta ken on board the support of the mass ive crowd. Mako to Tamada was 10 seconds down, never finding the right Bridgest o ne combination for th e track; likewise Shinya Nakano, another nine seconds behind him, salvaging the final poi nt . Jeremy McWilliams was 16t h, and then came t he lapped traffic - t he to uring Kenny Roberts, Noboatsu Aoki's Proto n, Alex Hofman n's Kawasaki and Michel Fabrizio. Abe had another disastrous race, dropping back to 13th on lap eight , then forging t hrough aga in for a strong finish. Hd'd passed Ho pkins and was closing on Capi ross i with two laps left when he had another mass ive highside crash at the bottom o f Craner Curves and was lucky to escape serious injury. Ch ris Burns and Kurtis Roberts both re t ired, the latte r with a mysterious loss of fue l pressure that had so meh ow recovered when the y restarted the bike afte r the race. Rossi starts his holiday wit h a comforting n -poi nt lead over Gibernau a nd Biaggi, eq ual on 14 2 po ints . Edwards moves up with 95 , Barro s has 86 , and Hayde n has 83.

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