Cycle News - Archive Issues - 2000's

Dualifying: The Americans Both qualifying sessions were run in the wet, with Saturday's worse than Friday's. The race weather was forecast to be dry, so qualifyingwould determine grid position but leave riders short on dry setup time . Telefonica MoviStar Colin Edwards was the top American, his fifth best time earning him a spot in the middle of the second row. It wasn't great, but it was an improvement over the II th fastest time he had run on Friday. "I was a bit worried because whatever happened, we just had to improve on II th place on the grid, and the rain in this afternoon's session made that difficult," he said. "We made some changes to the front end , and the improvement was obvious from the start. Within five minutes I had a good rhythm and I just concentrated on making up positions. We stuck a tire in there with 10 minutes to go and I went for it • maybe we cou ld have changed earlier but it worked out okay. We'll have to wa it and see what the conditions are like tomo rrow, but basically I th ink I can get back on the podium." That confidence is the result of a breakthrough found prior to the British GP at Donington Park. Edwards' crew chief watched hours of tap e in an effort to solve the front end chatter he's suffered all year. The fix came through new offsets · 2.S millimeters different that kicked the front end out further and allowed it to track with the rear wheel and a stiffer rear shock spring, amo ng others. Suddenly the chatter was gone and Edwards came a fighting second to Valentino Rossi at Donington, taking his first MotoGP pod ium. At the very end of the session Repsol Honda's Nicky Hayden was knocked off the sec ond row. He was sixth fastest in the rain, but Carlos Checa's fast time from Friday was just better than Hayden . "My feeling in the rain hasn't been what I hoped this weekend," he said. "Sunday morning last race it felt really good in the rain. The best I felt all year. I think I was second or th ird quick Sunday morn ing, so I was hoping to have a better feeling in the rain. Haven't been IOO-percent confident; I definitely got going better. " Having been 15th on Friday, it was a vast improvement. "Overall, the position is not as bad as it looked halfway through the sess ion and yesterday," Hayden said. "T his morning in the dry I felt quite good, so I used the same tires for a long time, and then the fastest lap, my last lap was some pretty used tires . I only really tried tw o tires this morning. one front tire . I used it the whole session just to make sure w e had something that would go the distance if it came down to it. The rear tire, there was a cou ple of options I didn't even try. I guess everybody is in the same boat. Overall, I mean I hope it' s dry. I definitely had a better fee ling if it's dry and I'm confident with a good start. It's always important to get with the guys early and latch on ." For the first time, Hayden was using the latest spec Honda RC-21IV that his teammate Alex Barros had been using for two races . Proton KR's Kurtis Roberts had been a revelation in Friday's wet session . He came sixth fastest, by far his best ever, and was a career-best 14th fastest on Saturday by virtue of his Friday time. But a crash near the end of the session ended his weekend and may rule him out of the next GP at Portugal in two weeks time. "Today I knew it was going to be tough because all the Michelin boys on the good bikes , you could see their times were coming up easy," he said. "Me and little Kenny [Roberts] - it was hard for us to go any faster. And for sure the conditions we re worse today, and I pretty much figured I wasn 't going to be able to go much faster at all." Roberts said as soon as he went to tip it in, the Proton KR snapped sideways and highsided him. The damages we re small fract ures in the left scaphoid and left elbow. Roberts is scheduled to test the KTM engine in a Proton chassis the day after the Portuguese G P at Estoril. Whether he 'll be fit for the test or the race isn't known. "I don't know what the hell I'm doing," Roberts said. "I've got to talk to Dean Miller about tha t and see what he thinks and see what team thinks is best." Robe rts Jr. was third to Ho pkins in the dry after leading for much of the morning session . But in the rain he came 16th on the Bridgestone-shod Suzuki . Bridgesto ne rain tires proved to be well o ff the pace. Kawasaki 's two riders were the two slowest, Shinya Nakano and Alex Hoffman finishing be hind w ild card James Ellison on the Dunlop-shod WCM . "We 're struggling on the rain conditions," Ro be rts Jr. said. "As far as the dry goes, I think we're as we normally are in the dry. There's nothing spectacular either way. I th ink we're probably 10th, 13th or 14th in the dry, so hopefully everybody else has made some mistakes in their set up and tha t moves us up a couple of places." Team mate Hopkins went fro m fast in the dry to 2 1st in the wet. "I pushed pretty hard and was sliding everywhere and still dropped posit ions," Hopk ins said. "It was to ugh to take after we'd been so fast on the d ry track. Qualifying this far back is rea lly going to make it difficult to meet my goal here, which was a podium finish." Briefly... Continued from page 15 w he n I was racing, and it was still scary. So hat 's off to finally making a change. It's a race th at I neve r liked wa tching on TV because th e next secon d you didn't know wh at was going to happen. How many people have had the biggest crashes of their lives ther e? It' s about time. They'll adapt. Everybody w ill ada pt . Nobody 's going to miss the 200. If they do , it' s the ir own fault. It's easy en ough, you go get a 600 , pump it up and let's go. It's factories trying to make a statement or say this and that. To me , it's the best decis ion they co uld have ever made." Pro to n KR's Kurtis Roberts believes his dalliance w ith Ducati is over. Rumo rs sur- faced when Roberts showed up at Mazda Raceway at Laguna Seca for the AMNWorid Superbike weekend. "T hey talked to me, but how serious was it? I don't know," he said. "Ducati always talks to a lot of people , I think. There's always that fact or there at the end that yea h we can talk, but the doing it part is going to be tough. That's what I've always expected , at least whe re I'm at, and ho pefully this team will be bet ter o r where I co uld be will be good. If I leave her e, I wa nt to mo ve up the ladd er. Like I say, I to ld everybody at Don ington I fee l like we've turned the corner. And even w ith this now [the broken left e lbow and scap hoid], it does n't bother me so muc h becau se all weekend we've turned the corner, and this wa s more of a lack of grip issue. You can't tip a bike in the corner and have the th ing just swing arou nd like tha t and the motor brake , it was none o f that . It' s just a very inconsis- ten t feel tha t we've had all year. We still tu rned the corne r, I believe , and we're still maki ng improve men ts, so I'm excited to be where I am, especiallywith w hat we have go ing o n. And I'm excited if I go so mewhere else. This is w here I wa nt to be ." Many of the teams, including Repso l Honda, Gauloises Fortuna Yamaha, Suzuki, Telefon ica MoviStar Honda and WCM, were staying o n to test on Monday and Tuesday. Valenti no Ross w ould be testing a new fairi ing and Set e Gibernau would have his first ride on the updated Ho nda RC-21 1V, the biggest change being a new, con cealed under-the-seat exhaust system . "W e don't have anything new or noth ing like that to test," Repsol Ho nda's Nicky Hayden said. '" need some more time w ith the new exhaust system. That's the thing we don't get to test at all. It's something' was talking to Mick [Doohan] about earlier in the week that don't make it any easier for me. He said when he first came, they always cou ld test all they wanted. They could race , go to the next track they were go ing to race , test and be ready, too. Now we weren't allowed to test in the break. Sure it helps to test Monday and Tuesday her e ; it's nice for the seat time , track time and learn some stuff, but it don't help you near as much as if we were going to Portugal to test and come back two weeks later to te st. We're not going to test there. Testing after the race , it's helpful, but if I had my cho ice I'd like to go on and test where we 're about to race. , think Michelin might have some stuff, they always have stuff. I cou ld te st all week tires if we wanted wwwcy !teoew om to." Arclight Suzuki's Chris Ulrich was scheduled to test the WCM GP bike o n the Monday following the race . Hayden said the new pipes are suppo sed to be better over race distances . "It might not actually be as good, they figure for just do w nright one single lap time, because the top seed is not as much. I didn't even try them back to back this wee k. I can't reallysay. Do nington I didn't get to try them back to back eithe r. It's to ugh to compare here from three weeks ago at Donington on a new engine. It's so small, Sete didn't even use it." The 2004 Mo toG P Best Qualifier awa rd has tu rned into a very tight race be tw ee n two ride rs - Gaulo ises Fort una Yamaha's Valenti no Rossi and Telefo nica MoviStar Hon da's Set e Gibernau. The prize, an $80,OOO-plus BMW 645, goes to the ride r w ith the lowest co mbined qualifying time in the GPs and th e official MotoGP Winte r Test in Catalunya. Any rider w ho doesn't complete qualifying in any of the 17 events is disqualified . Rossi's com bined qualifying times leaving Brno is 18 minutes , S4.4S2 seconds . Gibernau is seco nd at 18:S4.S47 , a differen ce of .09S of a second. Kenny Roberts Jr, had to reassess his o pinion of tu rn one at Mazda Raceway at Laguna Seca after watching practice during the AMNWo rid Superbike we eken d. Turn o ne was n't an area of concern w hen he , Carlos Ch eca and Wayne Rainey inspected the track over the w inte r. But watching Formul a Xtreme bikes go scream ing over the cre st made him th ink the 2S0 horsepower MotoGP bikes might be a handful. "Basically, the wh ole thing I can do is blame Co lin [Edwards] and Nicky [Hayde n] because they have ex pe rience," Roberts Jr. said. "I do n't have big bike e xpe rience there. I got in touch with bot h of them and asked them what their thoughts w er e, and turn nine was the biggest concern, and the othe r corne rs we re ve ry acce pta ble. We 're putting in a lo t of cur bs to protect people under bra king so th ey can't get into each other. We'r e do ing the most we can. O r they're doing the mos t they can with wh at they have to wo rk with. Me, I would always like to see it more. Again, as riders you have to understand your situat ion , and if somebody says, 'Hey, we' re going th ere to race ; make it as safe as you can, ' th at's kind of w hat you got to do . In a perfect wo rld, just make Laguna on top of a hill, straighten it all out and move all the walls. I don 't know if that's poss ibie. They certainly have been as open to anything we say as they can . I think it' s a financial problem in the end , so hopefully th ey get it figured out." Until his crash, Nicky Hayden had been the on ly rider in the premier class to have finished in the to p fIVe at each of the last five races . MS Aprilia's Shane "Shakey" Byrne earned the dubious title of Highside of the Weekend during Saturday's dry free practice sess ion. The Englishma n lost the rear in turn e ight, and w hen it caught traction, it th rew him well over the front of the Aprilia w ith Continued on page J9 CYCLE NEWS • SEPTEMBER 1, 2004 17

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