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by julian ryder
Monday, June 13, 2005
Usually, when a Catalan racer is half-a-second in front of everyone at the Catalan GP, the stands are a riot of flags, fireworks and noise. You can here them above the bikes. When Dani Pedrosa was fighting for the lead of the 250 race 106,000 people were screaming him on to victory and delighted raucously in his first 250 win on home soil—that's Catalunya not Spain, regional politics are very sensitive here. If you leave the Circuit of Catalunya and take the motorway back to Barcelona the first turn off is for a suburb called Sabaadell that looks like a large collection of high-density housing tower blocks. That's where Dani is from.
So shouldn't they have been going completely insane for Sete Gibernau, another son of Barcelona, in the MotoGP race? Shouldn't they have been recalling the last corner at Jerez (that was the Spanish GP) and baying for the blood of Valentino Rossi as the crowd did down south? What happened was highly illuminating. As Sete struggled to pull away from Rossi, who never let the gap go too much over half-a-second, the crowd sat there nervously and waited for the inevitable. It arrived three laps from the end when Rossi put a pass on Gibernau, broke the lap record and won by a second.
Last week after Mugello, Rossi said "I made my attack three laps from the end...' The crowd knew, Gibernau knew and everyone watching at home on TV knew it was coming, and they knew equally well that nothing could be done about it. It is a measure of Rossi's talent that we are no longer surprised by such miracles.
Rossi completed his usual lap of honor without being pelted with bottles or even being booed. A large part of the giant grandstand opposite the podium appeared to be wearing yellow, even here in Gibernau's home town. There was no Jerez backlash.
If you were looking for a major issue it had to be tires, and while Sete used his qualifiers better than anyone Rossi's crew again took the long view. 'We were more interested in what was going to happen a few laps in,' said Jerry Burgess. Michelin used dual and maybe even triple compounds while every Bridgestone runner had a tough time. The French company brought four or five fronts as opposed to their usual two and everyone is thought to have used a different front tire from their usual choice. However, several riders reported troubles with the left side of their rear tires and two Bridgestone runners, Hofmann and Hopkins, came in to change rear rubber. Conditions weren't extreme and the event top speed was 205mph (Capirossi), 10mph slower than he clocked in IRTA tests in March. What was extreme was the race pace. Rossi's winning time was 43min 16sec, last year it was 44min 03sec. That's an improvement of nearly 50sec in one year, or two seconds a lap. Is it any wonder the tires had trouble?
If Sete hadn't had a bad enough day, his team-mate raised a laugh at the post-race press conference when asked if he could win the title. 'I can't win it,' said Marco Melandri, only Valentino and Rossi can win it.' He hastily corrected himself, saying 'only Valentino and Sete can win it,' but the whole room was giggling, with the possible exception of Gibernau who choked back a laugh and fixed his team mate with a hostile glare. The trouble is, it's impossible to escape the conclusion that Marco was right first time.
(Congratulations to John Hopkins on his new pitlane speeding record - 172kph (105mph) against a 60kph (36mph) limit, set right at the end of qualifying. The set fine for this infringement is $100. Expect a new sliding scale of punishments to be announced at the Dutch TT ...)
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