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(24/09/2007)
Honour. It's a funny thing that the Japanese have. In Japan honour is everything. In Europe and America, and just about everywhere else, honour takes a backseat to money. You can't buy a brand new bike with a wallet full of honour. Honour is 'okay' but it's filthy great wheelbarrows full of money that gets the rest of the world fired up.
It's therefore slightly sick that although we have no honour we're always ready to try to dishonour the Japs. Dishonour is the worst state of being for the Japanese. Miles worse than a papercut or a humourless German tell you his life story. So to dishonour a Jap and have him falling on his or her sword is always a good laugh.
Step forward Ducati. Ducati, as we all know, are a small company. They started life trying to build bikes using hammers and rocks in an abandoned shed somewhere in the middle of an olive plantation in Bologna. The mechanical practice may not have changed over the years but these days the company is several times bigger and now the shed even has a padlock on it to protect Livio Suppo's famed pancetta recipe.
Honda, on the other hand, have a factory dedicated to racing that's so big it's visible from the moon - even from the dark side of the moon. As the sun rises in the land of the rising sun trillions of suppressed pintsized workers turn up work at the Honda factory - many of whom return the next day. They all have the same goal - to make HRC the greatest ever. Those not 100% committed to HRC find themselves lagging the seabed of the Tokyo harbour.
So for Ducati, with their ramshackle outfit of plumbers and pipe-benders, to defeat the evil HRC corporation in their own back garden would dishonour the grumpy Japs. But for Ducati to take the race win, the constructors title and riders championship* at Honda's own track was just rubbing teriyaki into their stab wounds. Alright!
Ducati did it. Back home in Bologna the entire staff went wild with both members (luckily the cleaner was on 'earlies' this week) hugging each other in an overly camp manner.
The win, oddly, this time didn't come from Ducati's hero Casey Stoner but from the leaking gasket valve Loris Capirossi. Little Loris, who sleeps in a divot, has been very unlucky this year. And by unlucky we mean rubbish. The once rated Italian has been made to look even smaller, which is no easy task, by the continued brilliance of his team-mate Stoner. Loris' only real success came in Germany when he stole some Michelin tyres, wrote 'Bridgestone's honest' on them with Tippex and stormed to an excellent second position.
Along the way we've had the usual excuses for his failings - not to a Foggy standard of course - resulting in the once loved Loris falling out with Ducati. So much so in fact that he now deliberately misses the urinal when at Ducati HQ and has signed with Suzuki for 2008.
Today, however, all his problems were behind - Stoner finished sixth. The race, like an old person's bedsheet, started very damp but slowly dried out. The riders all started on wet tyres but were forced to switch to slicks as the track dried. Capirossi timed his switch to perfection. So much so that once all the bike swapping shenanigans were over he lead by 15 seconds. Leaky Loris looked like a majestic Italian tank as he skilfully scampered away from the action leaving the rest to fight it out. But until that point the race looked completely different.
Leading the opening wet section of the race was a certain Valentino Rossi. He'd started slowly but had systematically worked his way past all. His move on Stoner was especially impressive accidentally catching the Australian off guard and accidentally causing Casey to accidentally nearly have an accident that would accidentally keep Rossi's title hopes far more alive.
Melandri, now a wet weather specialist**, was second with Pedrosa third and a cautious Stoner fourth.
Anthony 'wet weather specialist'** West though was the biggest loser. Having qualified on the second row in the dry Westy went West and jumped the start. But a crap jump start - one where the rider starts then stops and thus loses any advantage he could have hoped to achieve from a jump start. It was indeed the 'James Ellison' of jump starts. But thankfully that was the only comparison to James Ellison in Anthony's riding as the surfin' Aussie stormed to the front as blissfully unaware of his impeding ride-through penalty as an Aussie is of classical music.
But suddenly Guintoli was the man of the moment. Riding fearlessly (now that Hofmann was gone) the odd little Frenchie on slick Dunlops was setting laps seven seconds faster than the wet-shod leaders. It was Prost's nightmare but everyone's wake up call that it was time to shift to slicks.
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Pandemonium broke out over the next few lap as suddenly the pitlane resembled a British council estate with riders leaping from one bike to another and riding off at full speed.
The biggest loser now was Uccio. He was still overweight and hated by all. On the track the biggest loser was Rossi. He lead the race on wet tyres but took too long to makes the switch.
The title was slipping away. Earlier in the week Rossi had claimed that he'd beat Stoner at Motegi - it would appear that working along side Colin Edwards, a man skilled in the art of failing to perform to his mouth, has taught the smelly Italian nothing.
With the switch of bikes came the chance for the ghost of Sete Gibernau to possess Rossi's body. Ghosts, by their very ghoulish nature, tend to be quite scary - especially if you're a wuss. No one wants to see a deceased relative's haunted tablecloth eerily floating around the house when you're trying to get to sleep. Worst still all ghosts seem to have unfinished business don't they? Can't we for once just have a ghost that's floating around for the laugh and not poorly attempting to finish some unfinished business by scaring the crap out of everyone?
The ghost of Gibernau, however, tends to be irritatingly annoying as opposed to scary but does have unfinished business. Way back in the days when Jester Gibbers was a rider he was cursed by Rossi and never won a race again - whenever it looked like he was about to win a race he'd run off line through the gravel and then stare accusingly at his tyres shaking his head. Now that Jester has gone his ghost returned at Motegi to possess Rossi and finish the unfinished business. And how!
When he needed his magic the most Sete Rossi found himself running through the gravel. He then found it necessary to enter pitlane shaking his head and staring at his tyres. He demanded the front tyre be checked. The mechanics scratched their heads and checked it but it definitely didn't say 'Dunlop' so was fit to race.
It was fortunate, therefore, that one of his crew noticed he was possessed by Gibbers. A catholic priest was called in as the ghost needed exercising. Rossi did this by running up and down until the now out-of-shape Gibbers couldn't keep up with the exercise anymore and fell out of Rossi's haircut. With that the Italian loser leapt back onto his bike and rejoined the race. It was far too late though. Despite his best efforts Rossi was now so far back that he'd only end up finishing slightly ahead of Edwards.
So at the front Capirossi won. By miles.
Second place, confusingly, went to Randy de Puniet. The crazy frog's had a hard season with little reward. And this was justice for all his 'nearly' rides. How he managed it though is anyone's guess. One minute he was piling through the gravel in the wet, the next he was in second. How? Who cares? It was a brilliant ride and a deserved result for himself and for the fine folk at Kawasaki.
Third place went to 'special school' attendee Fat Toni Elias. Like de Puniet Toni was nowhere until the switch of tyres and suddenly he was third. With contracts needing to be signed again Toni was in no mood to slack or blame a lazy performance on his broken leg.
Fourth position outstandingly went to the yellow backed Sylvain Guintoli on the Dunlop sentenced Tech 3 Yamaha. The Frenchie momentary took third from simple Toni with three laps remaining but in the end failed by the width of a white flag to get on the podium. Nether the less it was Dunlop's greatest ever MotoGP race from their long and impressive list of no impressive results.
The unluckiest man in the race however was the poor Jap Kousuke Akiyoshi. Riding as a wildcard rider for Suzuki Akiyoshi pushed his way to the sharp end of the grid from the off confusing commentators around the globe. When it looked certain that the Suzuki test rider would finish high in the points his machine expired and leaving him, statistically, to score the same as Kurtis Roberts.
It's back to the test track for Kousuke to run another seven millions laps to iron out the engine problems.
* Okay so Ducati need six points more to claim the championship. But the Japs couldn't work it out due to the tears in their eyes from the dishonour and disembowelment.
** Or: crap in the dry.
1. Loris Capirossi ITA Ducati Marlboro Team (B) 47min 5.484 secs
2. Randy de Puniet FRA Kawasaki Racing Team (B) 47min 16.337 secs
3. Toni Elias SPA Honda Gresini (B) 47min 17.100 secs
4. Sylvain Guintoli FRA Dunlop Tech 3 Yamaha (D) 47min 17.676 secs
5. Marco Melandri ITA Honda Gresini (B) 47min 34.053 secs
6. Casey Stoner AUS Ducati Marlboro Team (B) 47min 36.663 secs
7. Anthony West AUS Kawasaki Racing Team (B) 47min 55.485 secs
8. Alex Barros BRA Pramac d'Antin MotoGP (B) 47min 57.827 secs
9. Nicky Hayden USA Repsol Honda Team (M) 47min 59.113 secs
10. John Hopkins USA Rizla Suzuki MotoGP (B) 48min 5.199 secs
11. Chris Vermeulen AUS Rizla Suzuki MotoGP (B) 48min 8.288 secs
12. Makoto Tamada JPN Dunlop Tech 3 Yamaha (D) 48min 14.797 secs
13. Valentino Rossi ITA Fiat Yamaha Team (M) 48min 15.183 secs
14. Colin Edwards USA Fiat Yamaha Team (M) 48min 17.219 secs
15. Shinichi Ito JPN Pramac d'Antin MotoGP (B) 48min 17.774 secs
16. Shinya Nakano JPN Konica Minolta Honda (M) 48min 38.463 secs
17. Akira Yanagawa JPN Kawasaki Racing Team (B) 47min 34.190 secs
18. Carlos Checa SPA Honda LCR (M) 48min 3.727 secs
DNF:
Kousuke Akiyoshi JPN Rizla Suzuki MotoGP (B) 40min 7.818 secs (Not enough testing)
Dani Pedrosa SPA Repsol Honda Team (M) 28min 9.647 secs (Fell off, landed on his head)
Kurtis Roberts USA Team Roberts (M) 2min 47.984 secs (Does anyone care?)
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