Cycle News - Archive Issues - 2000's

That elevated Rossi bac k to second , Biaggi to third and Hayden to fourth . Hayden was watching the Italians Rossi and Biaggi sc rap in tu rn one of the 19th lap when he lost focus and crashed o ut of fourth . " It looked really close from beh ind like they might to uch," Hayden said. "I thought, 'Oh boy, a hole's about to open up.' Th e next th ing I kne w, I was down. It was really early and too much front brake ." Biagg; never did make the pass and finished two seconds back of Rossi. Both qualifyingsess ions had been wet, and Biaggiand t he others had to gamble on setup. "I have so many vibration, so many chatter," said Biaggi, who opted for a new HRC exhaust system. " Not only one co rner, many, many places. On brakes, compa red to these two guys [Gibernau and Rossi) and [Alex) Barros , I always brake a little bit early. So I w as not in t he shape to fight fOf winning." Caii'lel Honda's Makoto Tamad a came fourth, working his way through the fie ld from his 17th place st arting position , a result of Bridgestone's less than-stellar rain t ires. Two laps from th e en d he took the spot from Marlboro Ducati's Loris Capirossi. "O nce I got past Colin Edwards in th e second half of th e race, I saw Capi rossi and kept on pushi ng unt il I finally cau ght him too," Tamada said. Capi rossi was among the majo rity ca ught 0 t by th e lac.k, of dry practice t ime. "Certainly we weren't helped by the w eather because we needed mo re tim e in t he dry to co me up with bette r se ttings ," Capi rossi said. Four laps from the end , Gaulo ises Fortuna Yamaha's Carlos Ch eca finally got past Telefonica Mov iStar Honda's Edwards . Edwards' second-place finish at Donington Par k convinced him and t he team that his front end chatter w e re behind him, but it reappeared on the third lap and haunted him to the en d . " It was crazy from lap two to lap three; it was a different motorcycle once the newness of the tires went away," said Edwards, the only Michelin Honda rider on that spec chassis. "We ne ed a chassis. A chassis would be great," Fortuna Gauloises Yamaha Tech 3's Norick Abe made his way from 14th on lap one into a fight for e ighth . Two laps from the end he passed teammate Marco Melandri, lost the spot, then took it back at the end by .079 of a second. Melandri was more troubled than most by the wet qualifying, his only dry time coming in Sunday morning's 20 -m inute warmup. "It meant the bike was very difficult to ride," he said. Half a second back came Kenny Roberts Jr. on the Suzuki. '~t the end I was with [Norick) Abe and Melandri, and I tried to stay close to them in case one o f them mad e a mist ake, but I was riding as hard as I could just to be t here ," Roberts Jr. said . John Hopkins, his teammate, ra n as high as eighth before a valve problem put him o ut in a puff of smoke on the 13t h lap. "I was just moving up on the inside of [Colin) Edwards w hen I heard a funny no ise and the bike st art ed losing po w er," he said . "I kept hoping it was something electron ic and it w o uld clear up , bu t unfo rtunately it was the motor and I had to pull off." Among t he other nonfin ishers w as Gregorio Lavilla, th e Spanish Suzuk i w ild card rider pitting w ith a rou gh-so unding eng ine o n lap fou r. D'Antin Ducati's Rube n Xa us cr ashed fo r th e second time of the weekend less th an three laps fro m the end , the victim of a me chanical problem. Others belie ved he left oil on the trac k because soon after both WCM w ild ca rd James Ellison and Ducati Marlboro 's Troy Bayliss crashed in the same spot. The final American never made th e start. Proton KR's Kurt is Roberts crashed twice o n Saturday, the second one more damaging. The injuries include a broken Valentino Rossi struggled with grip from his tires, but still managed to finish second. i Briefly... Telefonica MoviStar Honda's Co lin Edwa rds is the only Honda rider on Michelins still using the olde r chassis. He wasn't even aware there was a new chassis until a mem- be r of the Repsol Honda team mentioned it to him off-handedly after the Ge rman GP at Sachsenring. "I don't know what I said. Race is over. Finished. And he goes, 'Nex t time you should try the new chassis. It's much better,' and I thought , 'New frickin' chassis. I didn't know anything abo ut a new chassis.' I come to find out that was the race Sete [Gibernau] had it and Max [Biaggi] got it that race . And so the clock's ticking, races keep going by, but nobody's handing out any shit." Edwards said there was a chance he'd get it before the end of the year, but that he want ed it for the next race in Portugal. "I watched Nicky - he passed me - and I sat there and watched him for a lap, and I was like, 'Wow, how easy is that to actuallyget into the corner and be facingthe right direction when you turn the gas.' And mine, I turn the gas and it just squats more and doesn't turn even more. I can sit and bitch and moan all day long, but basically it's up to Honda. It's what they want to do. Ifthey want to give it to me, they'll give it to me. There's nothing I can do about it." Co lin Edwards never had meningitis, despite rumors to the contrary. "I'm feeling a hell of a lot better today than I was the last four days," Edwards said Thursday morning at Brno. "It's not meningitis, I'm not going to die. It's just some stupid-ass virus that I caught." The Saturday before leaving for Brno, Edwards woke up feeling hung over, even though he hadn't had a drink the night before. During a round of golf that morning, the feelinggot worse . At a party Saturday night, he had to excuse himself and take a nap. He woke up with a fever and the next morning he had red eyes . He knew something wasn't right. The diagnosis, after telling the doctors his symptom s, was that he had some kind of bacteria. "Let's do blood work, urine and lumbar puncture. I was like, 'What the f% &$'s a lumbar puncture?' It doesn't soundgood. Wha tever it is, something's going in my body." The doctor said he was about the l Oth person to come in with the same symptoms. Edwards tho ught it might be West Nile virus. "I thought, my buddy was lik 'Meningitis, but West Nile was in e, o ur area big time," he said. They ran the test for West Nile and said it wo uld take 48 hours for the results to come . A second opinion said it wou ld take weeks to get the West Nile results, but that it wasn't likely West Nile because there were no other symptoms. The clear fluid that was drained in the spinal tap immediately ruled out meningitis.The other tests would take time and there was nothing to do about the viral infection. Edwards stayed in bed all day Sunday knowing there'd be an onset of headaches. He was told, "If you start gett ing headaches, come back to us because your hole hasn't healed and your pro bably leaking spinal fluid." The headaches came and went th roughout the flight - he to ok three Tylenol and two Motrin at a time - and when he landed in Prague he had the worst headache he' d ever had in his life. 'And I had to drive my happy ass here two hours. As soon as I got here I was like, 'O bviously it was leaking.' I just basically put some ice on it and laid on it and tried to frickin' freeze it if it was leaking. I laid on my back all last night and this morning. Woke up this moming and felt pretty good. Went and got some fluids from the docto r, and I feel good now. Headache, little tiny hea dache, but it'll get be tt er. It seems like it's getting bett e r and bette r. But the virus is go ne anyway, whatever the f%#@ it was ." The American GP contingent chimed in on the change to Fo rm ula Xtremes at next year's Daytona 200. "I like 6oos, but at Daytona I don't want to do 200 miles on one ," said Kurtis Roberts, a two-time winner of the Supers port race. "The 600 race, you're pre tty much done after about three laps: first lap and last two laps. Doing 200 miles, on one of those you're going to have to wake competitors up halfway through the race. It is a move for safety, but a move for safety needs to be getting the tires and getting the track safer. It's funny about the track because they 're still not redoing the most dangerous part. So it makes no senseto me what the f&% $ they're thinking, because where they're having alltheir problems is still the same speed . So I don't know what pipe was being passed arou nd in that meeting. It's a Band-Aidon the wrong wound . That's one of those things that they're always going to say,'We changed the track.' Hey look, I could go out there and change the stra ightaway around. That doesn't mean I changed what was dangerous, so it doesn't . matter, unfortunately They're stillgoing to have the Super bike race , and in a sprint race or.2oo miles, you'resull going to have the tire pro blems. To give the thing to the Formula Xtreme dass right now when the only people that are in the Formula Xtreme class is Honda is stupid." Nicky Hayd en , the winner of the 2002 Daytona 200, said he liked the new layout but would like to see the East Banking eliminated. "They were SOpercent of the way there ," he said. Hayden pointed out that Miguel Duhamel was the "only real, factory, factory rider" who finished the 200. (Mladin rides for Yoshimura Suzuki, which is contracted to run American Suzuki'sfactory team). "So I don't know how that can be the premier race at Daytona with one factory guy out there, unless everybody's going to ride. Mydeal is there 's got to be one classwhere every body's in, that everybody wants to see , with allthe factor ies. Ifit's Superstock, Superbike... I don't think it matters as long as it's got all the stars in the re racingagainsteach other. The fans, sure they want to see the bigger bikes. But it's got to have one classthat's reallydeep, really competitive." Colin Edward s, the winner of the 1992 250cc Grand Prix at Daytona, thinks it's the right move. "I think that's awesome. Whoev er made that decision, I mean there's some people that are going to disagree with me, but I've ridden the race, I've ridden the track. It's not fun. It's survival. Especially with 200 horsepower. I didn't have near that Contin ued on page '7

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