Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles
Issue link: https://magazine.cyclenews.com/i/128364
Haga Says... apanese star Noriyuki Haga recently completed his first test on the Yamaha RI - the ike he will fight for the World Superblke Championship on. Italian contributor Paolo Goui caught up with the man who finished third in last year's championship to get his thoughts on the Yamaha after that first test at Phillip Island in Australia. J Did the Yamaha RI live up to your expectations? It was the first time that I rode a 10000c four cylinder. The thing is very fast! My impression is very good, but the bike at this moment is very difficult to ride because the injection setting isn't perfect. The power delivery is good, but the pickup, when I open the throttle in the comer exit, is too hard to control. Can the R I be a challenger for the 2005 World Superbike title? Why not - I'm here to win. The bike is really competitive. Our main problem is that first round this year is earlier than ever, and we are in strong delay. During the Australian tests. I lost two days to adjust my riding position, moving the seat lower and adjusting the rear suspension. On the last day, I worked around the general setup. We have three months of delay before I could test. You weren't allowed to test back In November at Valencia in Spain because your contract with Renegade didn't end until December 31, right? Mr. Mark Griffiths told me at MagnyCours during the last round in 2004 that I could not test for any different team before 2005. He didn't change his mind. You had the option of staying with Renegade or returning to Yamaha or moving to the factory Ducatl team, correct? Renagade isn't the right perspective for me because I wanted to move to a factory team. The final decision to accept the Yamaha offer was made by my manager Toshi Araki - you must ask him the question! You raced for Yamaha from 1995 to 2000, finishing second In the World Superbike Championship in 2000. Now you are home again... Yes, I know very well my actual staff - many guys were with me in the past. I will search again for a European home base in the vicinity of Monza - near the team headquarters [Gerno di Lesmo]. I like so much the Italian way of life. There I have many friends and a lot of fans. It's very strange to walk at night in downtown Milan and to be stopped by somebody to sign an autograph - I'm japanese, not an Italian star! But Italians are like me - a little bit mad when I ride a racing bike. Why do you think you lacked good results In 500cc GP and MotoGP? I went to SOOs in 200 I without any experience with a two-stroke machine, and it wasn't an easy move. I needed time, maybe two years, but I didn't have that chance. In 2003, I had no chance - the Aprilia wasn't competitive. I did some good lap times in practice, but I had no chance in the races. It Fantic Joins Italian Revival The imminent revival is now confirmed of yet another Italian trophy marque from the last century - albeit in this case a less prestigious one than such other recent comeback kids as Moto Morini, Benelli and MV Agusta. Still, Fantic Motor - acquired last year by a group of investors led by 42-year-old Veneto industrialist Federico Fregnan - did win three World Trials Championship titles in 1985, '86 and '88, courtesy of French trick cyclist Thierry Michaud. That is a feat that Fregnan is hoping to emulate this season in a different speciality, with the newly founded Fantic Motor Scuderia GP team, which has been assigned two places on the 250cc grid for the 2005 Grand Prix road race season by promoters Dama and has already begun testing an all-new GP racer. The bike has been developed IOO-percent in-house for the company by its technical partner, Franco Moro. His Modenabased CRP Technology operation is already an established supplier to the Ferrari, BAR-Honda, jaguar/Red Bull and Minardi Formula I teams, as well as to reigning World Rally Champions Citroen and its predecessors Peugeot, and it has created a crankcase reed-valve V-twin 250cc GP motorcycle from the ground up for the born-again Fantic Motor compa- 10 FEBRUARY 9,2005 • CYCLE NEWS is easy to lose motivation when you wake up on race day knowing that your chance to stay in the top posrtions is zero percent. All the japanese factories will return to World Superbike this year with satellite teams and with powerful I GOOcc fourcylinder machines. Do you think the Ducati V-twin era will end? I don't think so. I rode a 999 last season, and I know that Ducati will be a challenger for the title. The best advantage for Ducati is that the FOS will not have so many changes, so they have a lot of data to setup the bike perfectly at all the tracks. Kawasaki, Yamaha and Suzuki will be newcomers, and the season starts in few weeks. For us, it will be impossible to be at 100 percent in Qatar. ny. This season, the pair of white and black bikes lined with Fantic's traditional blue/red flashes will be raced by French former World 12Scc Champion Arnaud Vincent and - after Aussie Anthony West turned down the second ride in favor of a slot developing KTM's equally new 2SOcc GP racer - by Italian teenager Gabriele Ferro. But Fregnan's acquisition of Fantic Motor isn't just an excuse for another rich businessman to go profiling in GP racing with a famous name from the past. Fantic's comeback to the customer market is gathering pace, with the recent completion just north of Venice of the company's new factory at Dosson di Casier, near the Aprilia factory at Noale. While this is being equipped with production machinery, Fantic's R&D team is meanwhile developing a range of three models aimed at the youth and beginner markets, which are scheduled to enter production in April this year and, as in the past. will be powered by six-speed Minarelli two-stroke engines. The first of these will inevitably be a modern revival of what historically was Fantic Motor's most famous model, the 50cc Caballero, which will be offered in three versions - the Competizione full-race enduro model, the Casa street version, and a street trailie called the Super 6 Motard, another Fantic model name from yesteryear. Fregnan is planning to So you think it will take some time before you stand on the podium? No... absolutely. I'm here to win, and I will try to do my best from the first lap of the Qatar round. My goal is to win as soon is possible - from Qatar if possible! You are close to 30 years old, with a wife and two children... Are you more mature and calmer than before? I like to take separate my private life from racing. Far from the tracks, I'm a very normal guy. I like to relax and to stay with my parents. During last winter, I didn't travel a lot. I preferred to stay home to be Nori-Chan [Mr. Nori, in japanese]. But when I'm on a bike, I'm another person I'm Nitro-Nori, the nickname given to me several years ago by my Italian fans. Poo'oGozz' produce 1500 of these bikes in the first year of production, at the end of which they'll be joined by further models also under development. These include a SOcc trials bike to replace the much-loved Yamaha TY80, on which so many kids got their start riding motorcycles but which Yamaha unaccountably hasn't manufactured for more than a decade. (Used ones now sell on eBay for more than when they were new!) Also forthcoming is a middleweight street Scrambler, employinga new 300cc four-stroke engine that Minarelli is known to have under development. Fantic Motor was founded in 1968 by Mario Agrati, a member of the Milanese family, whose Agrati bicycle company took over the historic Garelli motorcycle firm in 1961 and built it up into a force that dominated I25cc Grand Prix road racing, winning a series of World titles in the 1980s with its Minarelliderived, rotary-valve, parallel-twin road racers. Fantic was based at Barzago, near Como and close by the sister Garelli factory, and from the very beginning focused on small-capacity offroad products, all powered by Minarelli-built two-stroke engines. These immediately became must-have models for bike-crazy kids during the boom times of the 19705, especially in Fantic's key markets of Italy, France, Holland and the UK. Fantics sold well in the USA, too, and by 1978, the firm was