Cycle News - Archive Issues - 2000's

when Pedrosa nearly ran into Melandri after failing to stop at the first of the final two hairpins. He nearly fell again as he recovered, very lucky to lose only one place to Hopkins. It was his only slip of an otherwise perfect afternoon. At this stage, Roberts was fourth ahead of Stoner, Vermeulen hanging on behind, but coming under pressure from Hayden, who had finally managed to get ahead of Capirossi. The American was finding it hard to pass Vermeulen, and when he did manage it at the chicane on lap six, it was only to run on straight into the gravel trap. He stayed upright, and rejoined in 11th, a long afternoon stretching ahead of him. Rossi had finished the first lap 10th, and stayed there for the first four laps as he adjusted to his differently set machine. Then he slipped past Shinya Nakano, profited from Hayden's indiscretion, and took two laps himself to catch and pass Vermeulen. Now he was sixth, but still not closing on Stoner, a little over a sec- ond ahead. By lap 10, the pattern was changing. Melandri still led, but Hopkins had run into grip problems, conceding second to Pedrosa on lap eight and third to Roberts next time round. The three leaders now gained a small gap as Hopkins dropped back. On lap 12, the lead changed - Pedrosa surging inside Melandri at McLeans and simply charging away. In half a lap he had gained half a second, a full second on lap 13, another half-second next time round. In this way, he kept on pulling away until he was 7.4 seconds ahead on lap 26. He backed off a little at that point, and still won by almost four seconds. The racing was far from over, howev- er. As the leader departed, Stoner got ahead of Hopkins into Redgate corner, and closed up again on Melandri and Roberts. At the same time, Rossi's pace was now increasing as he, too, closed on Hopkins, passing him on lap 15. Now he was less than three seconds behind Stoner, and whittling away at it steadily. At two-thirds distance, Rossi was just over half a second adrift, and on lap 22 he was right with the group, Stoner now ahead of Roberts and leaning on Melandri. As the quartet ran through MacLeans C Y C L E N E W S • JULY 12, 2006 27 Italian racer Michel Fabrizio made a short- lived return to GP racing, substituting for the injured Toni Elias on the second Fortuna Gresini Honda. A spirited rider, who ran most of a season with WCM in 2004, the Italian was drafted in from World Super- bike, and was setting to the task with a will when he highsided at the final hairpin on Saturday morning, sustaining a broken col- larbone. "I'm really sorry," he said. "I wasn't even pushing that hard, but I fell in the final corner. It brought an important experience to an abrupt end," he said. Marco Melandri had a strange tale at Donington, as he described how he regained consciousness in the medical cen- ter after his first-corner crash at Catalunya. "The first person I saw was Carmelo Ezpeleta [boss of Dorna], and he was lean- ing over me asking me in English what my racing number was. "He was checking to see how much I was concussed, but for me it was very strange. I wondered if I was having a nightmare," he said. Team Roberts's new back-to-basics chassis for the KR211V Honda hybrid machine was completed the day before practice, rushed to the track from the workshop some 75 miles distant to be fitted with engine, wheels and bodywork for the next day. It worked well from the start, with Kenny Junior spending most of practice on the machine, only switching to his Barcelona race bike for qualifying after inflicting some damage on the new one with a crash on Saturday morning. He also raced the Barcelona bike. "I caused them a little extra work, but they gave me a good bike for qualifying," he said. The latest ver- sion abandons the machined-from-solid chassis introduced by F1 guru John Barnard in 2004. One reason was a limit to the size of parts that could be machined, where they needed longer chassis spars. Another was their long experience with complex- section aluminum tube chassis - along with the more user-friendly service in the hurly burly of racing. "Geometrically, it is the same as the chassis we developed after Mugello," said team engineer Warren Will- ing. The design neatened up some points, while they continued to work on stiffness ratios. Roberts' results have been trans- formed since the arrival of the new chassis, which incorporated some geometry changes suggested by HRC, starting with the team's first rostrum since 1996 at Catalunya. A new definitive biography of Barry Sheene was launched at Donington Park, the track where the two-time World Champion scored his last true race victory in 2002, on a classic Manx Norton, shortly before being diagnosed with cancer (Sheene won a demonstration race at Goodwood later in the year, but the Don- ington was a true points-scoring tooth-and- nail event). Superbly illustrated, with many private, previously unpublished pictures over 224 pages, the book brings a legend up to date. It is a warts-and-all account of his life, from his earliest days helping his father, Frank Sheene, a rider and race entrant, through his World Championships Briefly... Pedrosa When It Counts Repsol Honda's Dani Pedrosa put down a warning in the first two free sessions, although Casey Stoner was quicker in the third on Sat- urday morning, and quicker overall. The Spaniard made no mistakes in the final timed session, getting on top early on, and waiting until the end to reinforce his pole, running almost half-a-second faster than before to claim an advantage of .482 of a second. Never very forthcoming, Pedrosa allowed that "I think we did a good job today. We need to see tomorrow if we can complete the job." He was surprised by pole, he said - his third of the season, but never looked as if he didn't thoroughly deserve it. "Compared with a 250, the corners come up very fast here and you are wheelying a lot," he continued. "But my bike feeling is good, and the race setup is about there too. I need to focus on making a good start." His closest challenger on race tires had been Stoner, but it all went wrong when he used qualifying tires, and went slower. Second went to Rizla Suzuki's Chris Vermeulen, relearning a track he last rode on a 600cc Supersport bike. "It's a hell of a lot different on a MotoGP bike," he said with a smile. He took time to get going, but slotted within six-thousandths of Pedrosa at the finish. Until in the latter stages he went faster again. "To be honest, I was struggling until today," Vermeulen said. "The thing tomorrow is to try to make a tire last and be competitive for the full-race distance. That will be the tricky bit." At a low-grip track where his Bridgestones are much improved but still lagging, this was a common refrain. This lent encouragement to Michelin-shod Marco Melandri, just two weeks after his huge crash at Catalunya, and now on the front row. "It will be very difficult tomorrow," Melandri said. "After a few laps in Assen, I didn't have any power. It will be a bit different here, but 30 laps are so many. You have to change direction so many times, and the straight is short, so there is no chance to rest. And the hard braking for the hairpins is very difficult." He was half-a-tenth off Vermuelen, with John Hopkins exactly the same time behind him, but on the second row. The Suzuki rider had crashed early in the morning session. "I was riding a little timid after this morning's crash," he admitted. He also had the Bridgestone problem - excellent qualifiers, worrying race tires. Marlboro Ducati's Loris Capirossi went fifth after a superhuman lap at the end. Still in pain from Catalunya, he had missed one Friday session altogether, but had placed third in the morning free session. Still suffering chest pain, he was unsure about his strength over full- race distance. "I did a 14-lap run today, but the race is 30 laps," he said. Randy de Puniet was the last man on row two, enjoying the Bridgestone qualifying tires and pushing Kawasaki teammate Nakano down to lead row three, by just three-thousandths. It might have been different had a gearbox problem not arose. "I missed the chance to use two of my qualifying tires," he said. Stoner was alongside, still having problems with qualifying tires, Michelin, this time. "I did my quickest time on race tires, and worn race tires at that, so I'm a little frustrated to be starting this far back," Stoner said. "It seems the better race setup I have, the worse the bike feels on a grippy qualifying tire." Pedrosa aside, however, he was less than three tenths off the front row and looking strong for the race. Kenny Roberts Jr. was next to him, only three-hundredths slower, a time set on his new machine, with the fabricated, rather than machined, chassis. He, too, suffers on qualifying tires, but gained some confidence from top-three, race-tire times, and the knowl- edge "that it's a bit easier to overtake here than Assen." There were some famous names on the fourth row of the grid - Yamaha's Colin Edwards and Valentino Rossi, with points leader Nicky Hayden in between them. All had sundry problems, mainly with bikes that weren't working the way they should. "The bike's not working well, and to be perfectly honest, we're not sure why," said Edwards. They had played about with springs and right height, to no good effect. "This is one of my favorite tracks, and I'm used to turning up and being in the top three from the first," he said. Hayden had lost time trying his new swingarm/chassis combina- tion on the first day, and to an electrical problem in the last session. "The new stuff is quite a bit different and it helped a bit at the rear, but the feeling wasn't good, and I lost all of my confidence in the front," he said. "We sat down last night, and decided to go with something we knew better." - The old chassis. Rossi had been fourth overall on race tires, but was 12th on qual- ifiers, and the first rider more than a second off pole. There were two problems - the first his physical condition. "I had a lot of pain in my wrist this morning, but Dr. [Claudio] Costa and Marco Montanari [his physiotherapist] did good work in the afternoon. But I am still not at maximum power, and I am not able to push to the maximum." The second was, as with Edwards, unexpected chatter and han- dling problems with the new Yamaha. "I didn't expect this. From Le Mans, the new chassis has been coming better and easier to ride. But from yesterday, we had prob- lems here. It is trouble with the marriage between the new chassis and the big rear tire. As usual, we will try a big setting change for tomorrow, especially to improve the balance under braking. But starting from 12th is difficult even if your rhythm is good - and my rhythm is not good," he said. Carlos Checa led row five from Makota Tamada and Alex Hof- mann on the second Marlboro Duke, the German still having trouble getting the feel right, with James Ellison alongside. Silva and Jose Luis Cardoso were at the back, substitute rider Silva crashing in final qualifying but still almost four-tenths ahead of his teammate. Michel Fabrizio, on the injured Toni Elias's machine, was out of the race after breaking his collarbone in the morning session. 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