Cycle News - Archive Issues - 2000's

Briefly... Valentino Rossi believes Nicky Hayden is ready to run at the front. "Yes. I think is possible he arrive at the front," Rossi said after Hayden's second pole. But more experience is needed. "In fact, Hayden ride very well on the left and the control when he slides is very good. Need to improve also on the other tracks, on the right. Also like Assen or some place like this, need a little bit more experience," the course of the weekend. "Very dose to a disaster," Rossi admitted, "because we arrive with a bad setting and I think we work on the wrong way, so we had a lot of problems after the first day." The team kept at It and "one by one we fix all the problems, and already after yesterday I was confident about a good race because the rhythm wasn't bad." The margin of victory was .685 of a second. Rossi's championship lead ballooned with the seventh-place finish by Marco Melandri. The younger Italian Is second In points, with teammate Gibernau third. Adding their points together still gives a deficit of fIVe to Rossi. With seven races to run, Rossi holds a 120-point lead, 236116, over Melandri. Gibemau Is another point back. Then another point to Gauloises Yamaha's Colin Edwards, who was seventh today after a weekend of troubles. Hayden, meanwhile, was an unhappy third. "After you get the taste of blood and winning at Laguna, going back to the podium Isn't cool anymore," said Hayden, who'd started from the pole. The now 24-year-old Kentuckian was leading when the race was stopped on the sixth lap and didn't have the same feel In the second, 2S-lap segment. ''On the red fiag, we changed front wheels. I never felt as good under braking," he said. Still, he was in position to take second when Glbernau ran wide In the first tum, but Hayden ran wide as well. leammate Max Blaggi got the better of Camel Honda's Alex Barros after a race-long duel. BiaggI had turned his ROIIV upside down in a futile attempt to find traction. "The front Is jumping and has chatter," he said. Both he and Glbernau raced on a newspec chassis that wasn't available to Hayden. An even newer model Is expected to be tested at Bmo following the Czech Gp. Barros lost rear grip at the end of the race and wasn't able to conserve the tire to the end. "I didn't give up though, and I tried to hang In there, but I couldn't do anything," the Brazllian said. Kawasaki's Shinya Nakano In sixth was the first Bridgestone runner, less than two seconds from Barros. He'd cut the gap to under a second before a few front-end slides cautloned him to slow down. The final nine riders had mostly lonely races. Melandri was eight seconds behind and 2.5 seconds up on Edwards. The race stoppage did Melandri no favors and his aim was just to finish as high as possible. "I was relaxed at the start and held on to fifth place, but I just didn't feel as comfortable in the second race," he said. Next was Edwards, who said, "We worked as hard as we could this weekend, but looking back over some of the decisions we've made, It seems like we should have tried something different." Then came Marlboro Ducati's loris Capirossl, his Brldgestones not the equal of Nakano's. "Today I have done better, but I could also just as easily have lost everything," the Italian said. Konlca Mlnolta Honda's Makoto Tamada was the final finishing Honda In 10th. Behind came the lone Suzuki of Kenny Roberts Jr.. lamenting the team's performance in the dry. Teammate Hopkins had one of the worst weekends of his career. A Friday highside, the biggest of his life, produced a litany of injuries that worsened over the weekend with the stress of riding. On the sixth lap of the race, they'd get worse. His second highside, nearly as bad as the first. was caused by his inability to shift the GSV·R properly with a broken bone In his left foot. "It was my fault really," he said. A bandaged foot and painkillers diminIshed the feeling In his foot. The foot acddentally hit the gearshift, the bike shifted to second. "and then I was flying," he said. Nike legend Michael Jordan took exception to Colin Edwards showing up in his hospitality SUite/garage in Valencia last year wearing Adidas shoes. '''What the hell are you coming in here with Adidas for?'" Edwards says Jordan asked him. "I said. 'Hey, man, hook me up. I need new shoes.... When they next got together, eight months later in the Red Bull hospitality area at the Red Bull U.S. Gp, Edwards showed up with the same shoes. "just kind of across the room, pulled one off and waved it at him, shrugged my shoulders. '1 thought you were going to hook me upr" Edward said. "'Let me see what size you are: Jordan asked, and as soon as I threw jordan his shoe, as soon as it touched his hand, he just threw it out the window on the front straight. And even though my day is done, I still had a lot of work to do. I didn't have any more shoes there," Edwards said. "I was like, 'Oh shit.' I'd had a couple of beers already by this point." Then jordan asked for the other shoe, "so I fell for the same trick twice. Threw him my other shoe, same exact result. on the front straightaway. Now I felt like a real dipshit. Everybody had a good laugh, everybody who was up there. Brad Pitt was up there and [Matt] LeBlanc and Deremy] McGrath and [Emesto] Fonseca." jordan produced a box of shoes that he said were the latest and greatest. "So I pull them out of the box and one ofthem is red and one of them is black. And I look at him and I went, 'Dude, where's the other pair so I can change them around?'" "They're supposed to be one red and one black:' jordan replied. "He said that's the latest shit, so I just took his word for it:' Edwards said. When Edwards returned to his home in Conroe, Texas, there was a box waiting with 20 pairs of Nikes. "I can't really say too much. It's top secret." That was Colin Edwards' response to his two days of serving as the Las Vegas tour guide for Valentino Rossi and a number of others follOWing the U.S. GP. Halfway through the first day he rented the "biggest f-ing Hummer limo I've ever seen in my life. It was f-ing huge. I can't imagine any being any bigger. There was only eight or 10 of us, but there was plenty of room to put I0 more." Edwards and his crew were granted VIP status by a cousin who formerly ran the Glitter Gulch strip club. "We did the whole Monday night thing, went and saw a show, had dinner, all that stuff. We left the place 5:30 [a.m.] or something. Then had Denny's breakfast. Got back to the hotel about 6:30, 7 o·c1ock. Actually. we did get up to go get breakfast, which was lunch at that time. We got a taxi to In-N-Out Burger, then went straight back to sleep." The best part for Rossi was that he went virtually unrecognized, a welcome change from a life of con- stant scrutiny in Europe. "I think there were two people that recognized him. One was a doorman and the other chick was Italian that recognized him. It was pretty cool. We went everywhere, banisters and VI P areas. Everyone was like, "Who the f - are these guys?'" Edwards was recognized walking down the Strip holding a two-foot-tall margarita glass. Valentino Rossi said the rider salety committee had recommended a number of changes for Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca. Chief among them was the first comer, where they'd like more runoff area. Next is turn six, on the left, over the crest and after to the Corkscrew. ')\II that part the wall is too close, so we try to make better for next year. Also, on tum four we have the wall, but that one is easy work. No problem. Need only to move the wall." And a resurfacing, which is scheduled for 2007 but may be moved up to 2006. "We need first the asphalt, the surface. Compared to the other tracks, it's very bumpy and quite old. So first the surface and is already good for the safety, because less bumps, less chance to crash." Teammate Colin Edwards thinks that any change to the track would diminish it. After his most harrowing race ever, in the rain-struck British Gp, Edwards thinks the surface at Donington Park is a work in progress. Despite a resurfacing in 2004, the track came under attack this year. "No, for me it's a lot better than it was last year. Last year it was really unrideable in the rain," Edwards said. "For me, the track's still a new surface. All the shit, it hadn't quite matured I00 percent. What I don't like about it is, yeah, there are no stones to kind of wash away. It's just flat as a table. But it's a little bit late now. We've already done it. We've proved that you can actually race in it. Whether it's perfectly safe or not, it's definitely the slickest track I've ever been on in the rain - ever. The thing is the patches, and some of the patches haven't matured, there's still shit coming out or it's still slick. Uke if you tried to go hard the first 10 laps like some of them did, you didn't know where the patches were. So, you had to gather the information where all the dangerous patches were and go around them, and you'd venture off and find another one. 'Oh f-, okay, I remember that one.' So you just had to be smart. That was the only way you were going to finish that race. just calm down and not be too f-ing crazy. But unsafe? I did say it was borderline, but we did it." Teammate Rossi said he used the early part of the race to prepare for his dazzling assault at the end. Rossi said he made a number of mistakes and nearly crashed "because was very difficult stay in front," he said "In fact YOil see a lot of riders coming from behind, like Colin [Edwards], like Dohn] Hopkins or Kenny [Roberts] also, but after don't go because in front was worse. When I make the mistake. I think I don't need the fourth place, so I try and if I make the mistake is okay. And maybe in that two or three laps, I understand is possible to go faster." Which he did at the end, pulling away quickly with a series of stunning laps to seal his seventh victory at the track in the British Midlands. Rossi said the British surface Continued on f'Gge 18 CYCLE NEWS • AUGUST 10,2005 17

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