Cycle News - Archive Issues - 2000's

already wearing a special shirt with the number one on it, took the lead and cruised to victory again. Most of the excitement in the moto came from Seel, who rebounded from his crash and fought his way from the back of the field to 10thplace on a circuit, whe re passing was difficult. Delepine, meanwhile, appeared to be back on pace after struggling in the previous rounds. He finished sec o nd, ahea d of Chambon an d Manzo. Lazzarini suffe red car buretion pr o blems and finished eighth again. The Supe r Final held no sur prises at the front . VDB basically dominated the race , pulling clear of a strong-running Delep ine , who had gotten the holeshot and didn't completely lose contact with VDB after the Frenchman passed him. But at the end , Dele pine was still more than 10 seconds behind VDB. Winstanley got a really good start to run third , a position that he kept for all 20 laps of the Super Final to land his first GP pod ium finish. Bad luck demonized Seel, who had a sma llcras h in the off-road section. He had to give up his d ream of winning a final in 2004, as sevent h place was all he could muster. In his last GP for KTM, Lazzarini batt led tec hnical problems in the Super Final. Confide nt that he would finish in third or fourth place, he had to return to the paddock five laps into the race after his clutch broke. 52 After taking the pole POSition for the class, Verderosa seemed to be on an easy wa lk toward his first World title. But on raceday he lo cked bars w ith Fabrice Leco anet and crashed , suffering a damaged bike and fini shing 2 1st. It meant that Verderosa would have to start moto two from the last row on the grid. A rea lly poor 17th place put his title chances in dange r but far fro m being des pe rate. The fact that title con tender Giraudo put in a sixth and a fourth place in the two motos on a circ uit w here the Aprilias couldn't reach their pe rforma nce pote ntial helped . But the Super Final turned out be ing a gamb ler, with the outcome not clear until the very last lap. Verderosa still had a 14point lead, but he put in an incredibly lackluster performance in the Super Final. Meanwh ile, Giraudo , who had a way more difficult task, impressed the crowd by scra pping for the lead right from the start. Suspense do minate d the race as Davide Gozzini battl ed with Giraudo simple contact up fro nt cou ld sudde nly tilt the situatio n and swing the title batt le back into Ve rd erosa's court. But Verderosa was struggling back around 17th , and des pite Gozzini breathing down Giraudo's neck and the slippery circuit, Giraudo d idn't give up fo r a second and fought hard to keep the lead, take the win and lay deserved claim to the S2 World Champ ionship. Not bad for a guy who see med unlikely to even find a ride at the e nd of 2003 after Team Ve rtem ati terminated its race program. "It was a difficult season with highs and lows," Giraudo said. " I want to thank all the peo ple who supported me to get this title. We worked rea lly hard, we didn't save energy, and in our first season we won the title. Incredible!" Verderosa see med to be less than distraugh t over losing out on the title. "If somebody told me at the beginning of the year that I wou ld end second , I wou ldn't have believed that, so I'm not totally disappointed for not winning the title," he said. The bigges t surprise of the day - next to Giraudo's excellent perfor ma nce was Spa niard spe cialist Jo rg e N es tor, w ho w on bo th moto s, wh ich he dom inated fro m start to finish, and the n got sixth in the Super Final after a less than perfect start. It was a very positive race also for forme r Worl d Motocross Champion Andrea Bart olini, who, on a basically sta ndard Yamaha, got resp ectively a fifth, a third an d a fou rth place in the three Sunday races - his best results ever. The re were also very goo d pe rfo rmances turned in by Frenchmen Adrien Chareyre, who got a third in the Super Final, and Alexandre Thiebault, who collected a fifth on a Honda. With Terra Modena's program apparently temporarily suspended, Thiebault got permission to race on the Honda. As mentioned, the FIM World Supermoto in 200S will be subject to format changes in the GPs, the moves coming as the resu lt of genera l suggestions by all part ies involved. 'The most important thing is that we will finally bring calendar stability," series prom oter Giuseppe Luongo said. "We've learne d enough now to get to that, and many other things are under discussion, like introducing overseas GPs fro m 2006." As for the 'OS format , only two mo tos will be raced , w ith points reflecting the same system as World Motocro ss GPs. Th e Supe rpole will come back as we ll, on Sunday morning, to red esign the first starting row. In bot h mot os, the grid w ill rema in the same acco rding to Saturday's time d session and the Superpole. More details are still under study for the next seaso n, and possibly fro m 2006 o nward the hierarchy of t he classes will be reversed, with the 450cc likely becoming the pre mier division. eN Conseque ntly, Jerome Giraudo (2) rode brilliantly in the Super Finol, wi thstonding the pressure of Davide Goui ni (1 1) to win the race ond steal the championship. www.cyclenews .com CIRCUIT DE FINESTRAT F INESTRAT, SPAIN R ESULTS: NOVEMBER 28, 2004 (ROUND 9) S I Su per Final (2 0 la ps ): I. Thfef'ry van den Bosch (KTM); 2. Gerald DeIepine (Hus); 3. Matthew Wins tanley (KTM); 4. Max Manzo (Apr); S. Jan Kvasnicka (Hus); 6. Fabric e Guyot (T M); 7. Eddy See! (Hus); 8 . Vatter Bartol ini (Hbg), 9 . G

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