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/128604
end of last season, and if Suzuki and Yamaha achieve further improvement over the winter, then Honda will need to respond. Criville's immediate teammates in the official Repsol Honda team are again Okada and Sete Gibernau, who switched from twin to four with good effect last season. There are also, of course, the satellite Honda teams - the most interesting of which is as close as possible to being a full works team, without actually breaking the contract with Repsol. In fact, it's rather hard to see the difference with the new Honda Europe squad, which marries Mick Doohan's former pit crew, led by the well-known Jerry Burgess, with new superstar rider Valentino Rossi. Rossi, Italy's Golden Boy, has impressed his crew and everyone else with fast testing times, competitive from the first time he jumped on a 500, and also for his consistent cornering lines and so on. Wildly popular, he has also proved wildly talented until now, though even he has expressed reservations about just how quickly he will be able to adapt to double the horsepower, few think it will take him too long after seeing him do the same thing from a 125 to a 250, and winning races in his first season. Especially since he has Doohan in the pit, offering advice and encouragement. Will Rossi win a race in 2000? It will be impressive if he does. Loris Capirossi has also moved back to the 500cc class, where he is a previous GP winner, racing for Sito Pons' satellite team, formerly sponsored by MoviStar. Alex Barros is alongside him, with the duo making up a rather formidable team. The satellite riders will race on stock V-four single-crankshaft NSRs. Just what have Honda built for Criville and any other favored factory men? HRC admitted to "experimenting with various different firing orders," while there were wild rumors that this was the long-suspected "Yamaha-style" twin-crankshaft machine. This seems unlikely, however. Why on earth should Honda change a design now that has dominated so completely since 1994, especially since they have said several times that they have no interest in two-stroke engine development? The same is not true of Yamaha, who are known to have performed a mirror-image trick, departing from their usual twin-crank V-four design to test a Honda-like single crank (Left) Young gun: Valentino Rossi - the man who will be King. Perhaps this season is a tad early for that kind of prediction, however. (Above) Jeremy McWilliams will bring some fire to the Aprilia 500cc GP team this season, teaming with . Tetsuya Harada on the factory V-twins. (Below) Norick Abe will return to the fray on his Antena 3 Yamaha. (Below) The other two on the Respol Honda team: Sete Gibemau and Tadayuki Okada. machine (or at least one with the crankshafts end on to each other, for even their in-line fours from way back when still actually used two crankshafts) . Whether this machine will be seen racing remains a mystery. As far as it is known, Biaggi is the only Gaijin rider to have sampled the bike, and he wasn't hugely impressed. There may be an element of double bluff in all this however. All the same, news from Yamaha's tests was that all five full-time riders had the same evolutionary version of last year's bike. Significantly, however, factory tester Koiji Namba was testing "a prototype" (no further details were forthcoming), which is presumably the single-crank machine, and which will be further tested in the forthcoming pre-season tests. Will it race this year? We shall see. Less vague were the lap times emanating from the tests, with Biaggi waiting until the last day before scorching around, in the first major improvement on last year's times by announced their withdrawal last year, but changed their minds after strong rides from Regis Laconi and mid-season recruit Garry McCoy in the later rounds. Sadly Laconi - a race winner last year - has broken his right ankle again in pre-season tests, and though he is expected to be ready to ride again in time for the opening round in South Africa, he will not be in top form. McCoy is back, after running only half-a-season last year in place of the sacked Simon Crafar - the popular little Australian improved by leaps and bounds, and now has halfa-season's experience behind him. A fifth Yamaha goes again to Norick Abe, who likewise gained in strength all last year, culminating in his fine win in Brazil. Last year Abe any rider at any track. Biaggi slashed more than a second off the previous best-ever time at Sepang, set by himself in "untimed" practice for the race last year. Impressive enough for anyone, but a big change for the Italian, who will now start the season on top form instead of struggling to catch up. Biaggi rides in Marlboro colors again for the official factory squad and his teammate is again Carlos Checa. Biaggi has changed his pit crew, with new head Fiorenzo Fanali (ex-Yamaha Superbikes, ex-Cagiva GP team) rejoining the factory twostroke team, and his former crew chief Mike Sinclair moving up as overall chief of both crews. Red Bull is back again on the second Yamaha team - the sponsors cue I e n e "" S • MARCH 15, 2000 15