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/128377
By MICHAEL IN rHE PADDOCK Scorr Shaoghai Surprise he very best thing about motorcycle racing is its capacity to surprise. Or perhaps that's putting the cart before the horse. The best thing about motorcycle racing is how human it is for a mechanical sport, and the best thing about humanity is its capacity to surprise. I write this in the aftermath of a Chinese Grand Prix, where preconceptions were turned upside down. Mine were, anyway. When I arrived at the extraordinary Shanghai circuit, which vies with Motegi as the most expensive racetrack ever built, I expected the worst. The facilities are magnificent; the buildings awesome, the track has plenty of distance and lots of speed. But the layout made the heart sink. They had spent something like $400 million, but with a layout apparently designed entirely to bunch up Formula One cars; as far as motorcycles are concerned, it looked as though every dollar had been wasted. By the end of the weekend, after a truly splendid race in which pure riding talent as well as courage was generously and justly rewarded, I was far from sure that I had been right. To a large extent, the unexpected was encouraged by desperate weather. It looked as though the nadgy little corners and the long drag-strip straights would stifle riding ability and favor horsepower instead. Teeming rain made the difference. And that capacity to surprise. For we watched in awe as two veteran substitute riders, Olivier Jacque on the injured Alex Hofmann's Kawasaki and Jurgen van den Goorbergh on Makoto Tamada's Honda, made the most of it. Jacque was simply superb, charging through the spray from I Ith on lap one to a career-best second, less than two seconds behind the (as-ever marvelous) Valentino Rossi. If the race had been two laps longer, he might even have beaten The Doctor. Jurgen was not quite so spectacular, but he certainly humbled lots of big names, riding a bike he hadn't even seen before he arrived there to a strong sixth. . And then there was Kenny Roberts Jr., a former World Champion whose performances since 2000 had left most people shaking their heads in dismay. This time Kenny leapt into the lead and was draWing away from Rossi when his overstretched Suzuki cried "enough," and rattled to a stop. But for that, Roberts might easily have won his first race in five years; even without it, he proved that his riding talent may be mostly dormant, but it's still there. T Their performances might have given a few better-established riders with nice, secure jobs reason to get worried. The reason for the expectations of disappointment were clear, and logical. As we know, motorcycle racing is at its best on fast, flOWing circuits. Think Phillip Island, or Assen. Or the old Silverstone. High-speed corners minimize machine differences and give good riders a chance to make up for technical deficits. And allow slipstreaming. As a result, more often than not, you get big groups of riders fighting for every high-speed inch. Slow corners do the opposite. Even braking specialists can't make up for a lack of acceleration on the drag-strip exits. It's simply a matter of horsepower. Just numbers. The Shanghai circuit takes the slow corner to new extremes. It does have one very acute hairpin, but that at least only turns the riders through 180 degrees. At two other points on the 3.27-mile track, the MotoGP riders met up with another kind of slow corner - a hairpin that has had the end bent over by more than 90 degrees. They have to follow the track around for more than 270 degrees, before a right-angle turn in the opposite direction sets them going back toward where they came from. Why build circuits like this? Apparently, such corners make for better Formula One racing. They bunch the cars up, and even give opportunities for them to overtake one another on the track, instead of doing all their racing in the pits (as iLl. A more cynical reason may also apply - by confining corner action to small areas and then debouching contestants onto long straights, TV cameras can film what's going on from fixed positions, without having to pan to follow the action. This means the advertising hoardings remain fixed on the screen, rather than blurring away to nothing. Money, money, money. It's certainly true that a 240-horsepower MotoGP machine gives its best in fast corners. But it's also true that the silly little corners are equally difficult for everybody. And on this weekend at least the variety of possible lines around a wide corner of more than 270 degrees meant that motorcycle riders frequently changed places as much as three times in one bend - an overtaking move on entry reversed halfway through, then successful again on the exit. It may not be the same as high-speed tactical slipstreaming, but it does make demands on other aspects of riding skill. And with 80 percent or so of the time spent with the bikes at maximum lean, speed on the long straights wasn't that significant after all - the Ducatis were fastest again, Carlos Checa clocking 212.5 mph in practice, with teammate Loris Capirossi clocking 212.2 mph, and Rossi's MI Yamaha 7 mph slower. In the race? Checa crashed trying to make up for a rotten start, and Capirossi struggled to 12th. What does it all mean? Simply that by the end of the weekend, the dog-inmanger attitude no longer applied. Yes, the track has been made for Formula One, but let's face it, that is the motorsport that rules the roost. And we still have Assen and Phillip Island for ourselves. The long-term prospects may be bleak, but for the present, tracks like this do add variety to the year, and (weather permitting) can yield uplifting racing. So let's accept what we have and make the most of it. Aside from the fact that the luck and the results will almost always favor the blessed Doctor, you never know what might happen next. That's the beauty of it. And that's why we all keep coming back for more. eN CYCLE NEWS • MAY 11, 2005 103