Cycle News - Archive Issues - 2000's

Briefly... Yamaha boss lin Jarvis confirmed that the factory was actively trying to sign Valentino Rossi to a contraa. "We are in discussion, and it is a process of ongoing dialogue," Sete Gibernau (15) and Max Biaggi (3) battled throughout the race for fourth position with it finally going to Biaggi. Rossi's advantage widened to 79 points, 186-107, over Marco Melandri, his nearest challenger. Throughout the weekend, the MoviStar Honda MotoGP rider clashed with the track repeatedly and with finality on the first lap of the race. Braking for the last corner, a first-gear left, Melandri lost the front when he hit a bump. The he said. "I'm optimistic that we can find a solution." Jarvis said that he believed Rossi would like a one-year deal "to keep his options open on a year-by-year basis for the future. From Yamaha's side we would love to be able to renew a two-year deal, but we are open to any proposal from Valentino's management." Jarvis confirmed that Colin Edwards is signed through 2006 and that he believes Edwards is a championship threat. "I think Colin can be up there in that group, and I think the bike has improved dramatically. Technically, we are much more advanced than we were two years ago. I would agree that we need more strength in depth in our riders. If Valentino left, we would have to get aggressive on rider recruitment, no doubt." Yamaha would like to keep four bikes on the grid for 2006, but no decision has been made. "We could have less, or we could have more," he said, adding he expected to continue with Herve Poncharal's Tech 3 team next year. "Our ideal target would be to have four. I think Honda has too many bikes. In one way, it's fortunate for the sport so we have a full grid, but on the other side it is not necessarily the right strategy for them to win the championship. You can see now they are eating into The battle for sixth was between Troy Bayliss (12), John Hopkins (21), Shinya Nakano (56) and Makoto Tamada (6). RC21 IV skittled into the gravel track, knocking over Camel Honda's Alex Barros. 'The lead group were really close together in the final corner of the first lap, and they braked really hard in front of me," Melandri said. "I also had to shut off and lost the front. I crashed, and I'm sorry for taking Alex Barros down, too." Melandri was the most outspoken, but not the only, critic of the 2.238-mile road course nestled in the hills east of Monterey. His level of vitriol was consistent over the course of a weekend that included two crashes before the race ever began. Today's nonfinish is his first of a season in which he hasn't finished worse than fourth. Today, fourth place went to Hayden's Repsol Honda teammate, Max Biaggi. From his third-row starting spot, the Roman was third on the first lap. But on the fourth lap, he lost three spots while challenging Troy Bayliss in the Corkscrew, the track's signature corner. He recovered to pass Sete Gibernau on the 10th lap, "I also liked the duel with Gibernau, tough but always fair," he said. Gibernau was happy to be at the front. Following qualifying, he had a two-word answer for his status: "I'm f-ed," he said. The morning warmup had yielded a breakthrough, and the unrideable Honda was suddenly user-friendly. "I think that was one of my best races of the season, if not the best, even though the result might not reflect that," the Spaniard said of his fifth. On a track where he'd won in World Superbike, Troy Bayliss came sixth, The Camel Honda came out best of a quarrelsome quartet. "Sixth isn't what I want, or what I expected here at Laguna," the Australian supporter of the circuit said. Makoto Tamada, John Hopkins and Shinya Nakano followed qUickly, with Loris Capirossi losing touch with the group to finish a lone 10th. Then there was a gap to Fortuna Yamaha's Ruben Xaus, another rider who favored the bumpy roller coaster of a track. A momentary gearbox glitch dropped Kawasaki's Alex Hofmann three spots to 15th. He recovered the positions to each other's points, and that's not really working for them to win the title. I'd like to see each manufacturer sharing its responsibility to the sport. If everybody had four bikes, it would be the ideal scenario. Everybody could try and bring on young riders." As for developing talent through the ranks, the way Honda does, it can't be done at the moment because of Yamaha's lack of involvement in the lower classes. "The best thing for us in the future would be to get rising talent into the second team and have potential to grow and gain experience, and then step up in the future, Toni Elias is one of those riders that could come through, but we need more than just him. It's something that we are seriously looking at," Arvis said. Eckl was asked to respond to reports that Biaggi had been offered a $3-million contract for 2006. "Honestly, I never spoke to Biaggi myself," Eckl said. "Maybe KHI [Kawasaki Heavy Industries] did." A team spokesman was more emphatic. "For sure Max Biaggi is not one of them at the moment." Shinya Nakano is under contract for 2006, but German Alex Hofmann is a free agent, Eckl is one of the many with experience at Laguna Seca, though his isn't a happy one. "I was knocked off by [Alex] Criville in the Corkscrew," Eckl said of the first-lap incident in the 1991 250cc Gp. Eckl said Criville got the worst of the collision, breaking his collarbone. "He [Criville] said, 'I could not hold the brake,''' Eckl said. Repsol Honda's Nicky Hayden let slip that, despite being from the South, he's not a big NASCAR fan. "I definitely think a lot of the Americans are missing something," he said. "They follow some other racing here in the U,S. that I don't think has nothing on MotoGP and sports, so I think they're going to like it [the MotoGP]." Could Tommy Hayden have joined his brother on the MotoGP grid at Laguna Seca? So went the rumor that was quickly shot down by Eckl, though not before he revealed there was some truth to it. Eckl said the attraction was that Hayden was "an American riding in America. He knows the circuit." Reality set in when Eckl realized that Hayden would need to test somewhere outside of America, Europe or Malaysia, he mentioned. "Then we immediately didn't go farther with this idea because we could not work it out. It is still for me, it would be a good idea, and I introduced this to Kawasaki maybe in the future in the next year to think about this kind of things." Former World Champion Freddie Spencer proved he still has a keen awareness of what it takes to go fast. Among a group of 15 current and former riders asked to predict the pole time, Spencer guessed I:22,7. Nicky Hayden's pole pOSition lap was a 1:22.670. That the sponsors have undue influence in rider choice for the Tech 3 team is of some concern to Jarvis. ''Any satellite team has to stay in business, and to stay in business, you have to finance your place, That means you need to pay careful attention to the sponsors' wills and desires. The dilemma comes when a sponsor wants to go in a direction because of marketing issues while the team wishes to go another direction because of performance issues, It's working out the correct balance between marketing and sporting performance issues. The only way you can take that away is to be very strong or to finance it yourself, or have a very longstanding sponsor that gives complete faith to the direction of the team," He added, ')\t this moment we are not satisfied or happy with the results of the Tech 3 riders [Ruben Xaus and Toni Elias], and we will be looking for improvements in the future." Kawasaki team manager Harald Eckl said he hasn't started to think about next year's riders yet, but that Max Biaggi won't be one of them. There were more than a few teething problems at the first U.S. GP in II years. The extraordinary first session, originally scheduled for two hours, Was delayed 25 minutes because of confusion among the comer marshals. "We had 25-minute delay this morning which we haven't had experienced at a Grand Prix for many, many years, either at Brazil or South Africa or anywhere like that," Rossi's crew chief Jeremy Burgess said. "It got down to the stage I heard was that the marshals were wandering away from their posts." Race director Paul Butler explained. "Corner workers were in the right place, the flaggers weren't in the right place, There were some adjustments that were required. The clerk of the course [Ron Barrick] is responsible. He's responsible, together with me, to see that it's right. Obviously, we make the plan, and it's up to the people to set it up that when we inspect it, that everything's in the right place." The bikes finally sped out of the pit lane at 10:25 Continued on poge 25 CYCLE NEWS • JULY 20,2005 21

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