Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles
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By IN "HE PADDOCK MICHAEL SCOTT Getting Better our F races in, and we've watched some of the best riding we've ever seen in MotoGP - especially in France, where Sete Gibernau recovered from a bad start to scythe through the field to the front. Setting one record lap after another, the Spaniard's display was almost faultless, his stature as the fastest Honda rider on the planet underlined again and again by the stopwatch. He finished second. You can imagine how much that must hurt, but that's what it's like when you're up against one of the greatest racing geniuses of all time. The vaulting technical prowess of Honda is bamboozled over and again by the soaring talent of Valentino Rossi. Riders matter more than bikes. Up to a point. For it was events at the other end of the grid that highlighted the nature of MotoGP in its fourth season, where the rich have grown richer, and the poor have been left further behind - and have proved this equation is reversible. Riders only matter more than bikes if those bikes attain a certain standard. With Honda continually raising the stakes, that standard is not easily reached. Nonfactory teams aside, the booby prize has long been contested between Kawasaki and Suzuki. In 200S, Kawasaki has found some relief, as its generally unpretentious MotoGP package (a bike that in its first year I was obliged to describe as a clunker, much to the bafnement of the Japanese team staff) has achieved a balance that allows the riders to exploit some of their own talents. The cliche that you make your own luck has proved uncomfortably true in racing time and again. But perhaps it is only pure bad luck that has left Suzuki holding the wooden spoon. If so, it seems to have a magnetic attraction for it. In China, bad conditions gave Kawasaki a best-ever second place, as super-sub Olivier Jacque took to the water like a frog in its element. Suzuki, similarly disadvantaged on top speed but wearing the same new and improved Bridgestone wet tires, might have expected to enjoy the same effect. Instead, Kenny Roberts Jr. broke down after just four fastest laps, and John Hopkins (as always riding the wheels off the thing) lost a strong position with a gallop across the gravel. Roberts was actually leading the race, no less, and gaining ground on ultimate winner Rossi when he packed up, so in a perverse way it was a kind of dream result for the 2000 World Champion. In that glory year, he regularly beat not only Max Biaggi, Alex Barros and other big-timers, - or Not but also the great Valentino. Since then, his confidence that he could do so again has never been shaken, but his commitment has often been open to question. Now, he displayed a riding talent undimmed but was freed from any obligation to prove he could keep it up for full race distance. Home early for a soda instead. Engine failures are generally described as "rare," but this particular failure really was almost unknown these days - a failed big-end bearing. It may be that the extra revs and power of the 2005 GSV-R have unearthed a weakness that will be repeated, but it is more likely to have been a faulty component. Bad luck? Yes, it was rather. On to France, where race-day Roberts reverted to lackluster mode. Now it was Hopper's turn to find misfortune, and the sheer power of schadenfreude made it impossible not to smile through the sympathy that his case obviously deserved. It was all rather confusing at first, as you might expect in an environment where it is perfectly normal to hang a sign out on the start line saying "Wet Race," when it isn't actually raining. What this sign actually means is that Race Direction thinks that it might rain, therefore it will be permitted to pit to change bikes if it does - under the new-this-year flag-to-flag rule. They all blasted off up toward the famous Dunlop bridge, but before they'd got back again, here came Hopkins, sputtering up pit lane. There, he leapt off one bike and onto the other, and set off after them, now almost a lap behind. It took a wee while to work out what was happening, with some assuming that he'd actually taken the gamble to start the Some joked that this showed the advantage of riding for the only factory team to bear the name and logo of a mere dealer - that as long as your bike's still under warranty (and Hopper's had not done two laps since being signed off from its last service), there's always a courtesy bike available. In truth, it was either inspired pit work or inspired guesswork that meant they had another bike ready for him, on the right kind of tires, when the obvious choice for the spare (given the threatening weather) would have been wets. Suzuki really has seemed to attract misfortune, not just this year but serially. Even back in the days of Kevin Schwantz, the Suzuki two-stroke was such that he had to over-ride it on almost every lap to achieve his phenomenal results. This neversay-die effort meant he fell off rather a lot, and one worries to see Hopkins apparently heading off all gung ho down the same road. He's got a big talent, and would have corner attack in his pocket for emergencies, rather than having to use it every lap. So, here is the proof that, at the wrong end of the scale, the rider matters more than the bike. The equation is reversed. At the same time, Kawasaki's, better results have shown that the balance is not always predictable, while Hopkins' corner speeds have demonstrated that the GSVR is not without some strengths. Perhaps time will reverse the fortunes in this two-make battle at the back. eN a much easier time on a bike where he could keep that high-intensity, heavy lean-angle race on wet tires and had popped in to switch to slicks, to become the first rider to change bikes under the new rules. Not the case. In fact, a servomotor operating the complex semi-flyby-wire throttle system had failed on the warmup lap. Poor man hadn't even been able to keep up with the pace car. Legally, he could switch from one slickshod bike to another under another section of the rulebook, which allows you to start from pit lane at any time until the leader completes the first lap. He just made it. CYCLE NEWS • JUNE 1,2005 95