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
(Above~ Regis Laconi ended his pre-season testing season with a broken ankle. He says he will be back for the series opener in South Africa. (Below left) Tohru Ukawa spearheads Honda's 250cc GP efforts. (Below right) Daijiro Katoh will ride an Axo Honda Gresini entry in the 250cc World Championship. (Above) Emilio Alzamora will carry the number one plate in the 125cc Grands Prix. Frenchman Sebastien Gimbert and ex-TSR rider Jose-Luis Cardoso are both back on board V-twin Hondas. 2S0cc: A GAME FOR THOSE LEFT BEHINO As with the 500s last year, the 250s have lost their dominant champion. With Rossi gone, we can rely on this pleasingly pure racing class (no crazy over-powered sliding here) to produce an unseemly brawl among those left behind. The machine profile is as last year, with the usual over-winter adjustments. Which is to say of course everybody is claiming machine improvements, and the pitiless tarmac will soon reveal whose confidence is best placed. The rider pool likewise - minus Rossi, and plus two hot-shoe chargers from Japan: Daijiro Katoh on the Honda and Naoki Matsudo on the Yamaha. Honda's tandem twin is coming into its third year of racing now, after gaining impressive maturity in only its second. Tohru Ukawa spearheads the challenge - a consistent rider who also adds another year of experience, after challenging for the title last season. Much is expected also of Katoh, who brings fine fighting experience on the NSR. The only other rider with a factory bike is only in his second season, and his first on the NSR, but Anthony West - again Ukawa's Shell Advance teammate, made a strong debut last year, and the young Australian, still only 18, is on the rise. Yamaha matches Honda's factory strength with three full works machines as it is year two for the Chesterfield pairing of Shinya Nakano and Olivier Jacque. Both won GPs last year, both will surely do so again. Nakano's debut season was as impressive as you like, reminiscent of Harada's, though the older rider achieved the greater distinction of winning the title. New tracks and old hands were little problem. Now he's almost an old hand himself, and would be something of a title favorite were it not for the even more redoubtable strength of his cavalier French teammate Jacque, who postponed a planned move to 500s for one more 250 year. Plagued by injury for the past two seasons, he'll be formidable in 2000 if he can stay in one piece. Aprilia offer only two riders - the old man of the class Ralf Waldmann (18 times a GP winner, the most never to be champion) and the young man. Marco Melandri was almost dominant in 125s, and now follows Rossi's primrose path on a factory 250. Like his predecessor, Melandri is a remarkably fast learner. I predict he will win a race this year. The distinction is always blurred, however, between Aprilia's factory bikes and their supply teams, all nominally factory backed, but seeming to end up with a variety of equipment depending on status, results, and possibly some other whims of the Italian factory and Dutch racing boss Jan Witteveen. Franco Battaini is foremost among the "near-works" riders, after a strong season on a similar bike last year; new to the ranks are two British riders, Jay Vincent and Jamie Robinson. Vincent has shown well so far on an A-kit Honda, but his backers, Padgetts, tired of waiting in vain for a works bike, have switched to an Aprilia this year. Robinson is making a comeback after struggling and finally crashing as factory Suzuki teammate to Numata in 1997. Fast Italian Luca Boscoscuro is another on Aprilia's favored list, while rising Germans Alex Hofmann (in his second season) and new youngster Klaus Noehles are also on the Italian machines. Four more private Aprilia riders, Italian rookie Ivan Clementi, Briton Adrian Coates and Spaniard Jeronimo Vidal and David Garcia bring the total number of Italian machines to 12, making them the most numerous. Yamahas are next, with a total of eight machines, and a similar blurring of the edges between privateer and works men, at least in the case of Sebastian Porto, who claimed fourth in his home GP in Argentina last year giving the prototype new privateer Yamaha a race trial. Others on Yamahas are Spaniards Alfonso Nieto and Lucas Oliver Bulto (another from the famous motorcycling family, cousin to Sete Gibernau), new German Mike Baldinger and Malaysian rider Sharol Yuzy. Honda has one less in total, private machines ridden by ex-Yamaha man Johan Stigefelt in the Dee Cee Jeans team, Dutchman Jarno Janssen, impressive young Italian Roberto Rolfo and David Checa, younger brother of Carlos. on, with Emilio Alzamora defending his title in the absence of his closest rival, Marco Melandri, who has gone to 250s. And Honda can muster more famous names among their riders, including again Nobbie Ueda and Lucio Cecchinello in the Givi team, and Masao Azuma on the Liegeois machine, while Mirko Giansanti has come back to the marque after a down year on an Aprilia, and German Steve Jenkner has made the same switch. Look out also for the tiny Massimiliano Sabbatani among the rest of the entries. Aprilia responds with a pair of old stalwarts, the luckless Roberto Locatelli and Gianluigi Scalvini, with rising Frenchman Arnaud Vincent also back for more of the same. Ex-Honda man, the promising Simone Sanna, also switches to the homegrown product, while Gino Borsoi is another Aprilia man who was starting to show strongly towards the end of last season. Privateers bring the total number of Aprilias to nine. Derbi is back for a second year, with the redoubtable little Youichi Ui and teammate Pablo Nieto joined by a third Festina team member, new Italian white hope Manuel Poggiali, snatched from Aprilia by some endof-year shenanigans. And Italjet arrives, with returning Czech rider Jaroslav Hules joined by British rookie Leon Haslam, son of the mighty Rocket Ron Haslam, making his big-time debut after a sound start in national racing as a young teenager. eN 1 2Scc: MORE OF THE SAME Like the 250s, the usual limit of 25 has been extended by two, in both cases taking into account the relative shortage of 500s. Honda has by far the greatest numbe.r of entries, with 13 out of the 27, while the class has four competing marques, with the new arrival of Italjet. Honda also has the World Champi- c y c I ... n e .... S • MARCH 15,2000 17