From a press release issued by MS Aprilia:
Régis Laconi and the Cube end first day at Valencia with 10th quickest time.
In the free practice tests in the morning, Régis Laconi struggled to get the right-hand side of his tyres up to the right temperature in the five righthanders on the Valencia circuit, but in the afternoon he managed to obtain ideal grip on both sides. During the first part of the session, he immediately posted a time of 1’35.343 on race tyres, which kept him up in eighth provisional place for a long time. Then, towards to the end of the session, after completing the first phase of work on the settings, he mounted qualifying tyres and made 1’34.618, which meant he had posted the tenth best time in today’s MotoGP sessions. Régis has an excellent relationship with the Valencia circuit for this is where he won, in the driving rain, in 1999.
# 55 Regis Laconi – (MS APRILIA RACING) – 10th – 1’34.618
“I started the session with the bike in its race configuration and went straight into attack mode. The air temperature was higher than in the morning and the grip was much better. Even with race tyres, I was going fast and managed to keep the Cube right up against the edge of the corners. I also used an evolution injection system and was very impressed with it. So I’m very pleased. Sure, with qualifying tyres I improved my lap time, but what really matters is that we’ve done some good work preparing for the race, and the bike’s handling well – and that’s essential here at Valencia. We’ve still got tomorrow’s sessions to improve further and I really want to ride a good race, at all costs: I know the track well, I like it, and I won here in 1999 – so I want to get a good result on Sunday.”
More, from a press release issued by Red Bull Yamaha:
GARRY McCOY kicked off his preparations for Sunday’s season-ending Valencia GP in Spain by slotting his Red Bull Yamaha onto the provisional second row.
The Australian promoted himself into eighth place in the closing stages of the hour-long session to finish just under a second adrift of pole-setter Alex Barros.
McCoy, who topped the time sheets at an pre-season IRTA test in Valencia back in February with a time of 1:34.00, was half-a-second off that benchmark, but cited different track conditions and set-up for him not getting closer to the time he set nine months ago.
Valencia has happy memories for McCoy, who finished third here in 1999 and won the race in 2000. He was hoping the tight nature of the track might help him bridge the gap between his two-stroke YZR500 and the new generation 990cc four-strokes, but Brazilian Barros was 0.5s faster than McCoy’s winter best, underlining once again the tough challenge facing the riders still on 500s.
McCoy still left a host of four-strokes trailing behind him.
American John Hopkins found himself in 16th place after a spill in the early moments of the session. The 19-year-old lost control of his YZR500 approaching the tricky downhill last corner on only his third lap out of the pits.
Valencia, which is likely to attract a three-day weekend crowd of over 200,000 fans, was one of the few tracks that Hopkins had the benefit of pre-season testing. After his encouraging display today, he is confident of more major improvements in tomorrow’s final session.
This weekend’s final GP of 2002 will be a nostalgic affair with the two-stroke 500s bowing out of world championship racing at the end of Sunday’s race.
McCoy and Hopkins are now two of only nine riders left in the 22-strong field riding the two-stroke machines.
GARRY McCOY 8th 1:34.518
“I was expecting to be on my testing pace. My set-up was the same today as we finished at the test but I was able to go quicker in February. The track feels a little bumpier, especially under braking in a couple of places. Maybe it is because of all the truck racing and F1 car testing they do here. We will have a look at the computer and make some changes to make the front feel better over the bumps. It’s only Friday so maybe the time will come down to what I did in testing. I came here though thinking I would be pretty close to the four-strokes with all the tight corners but it is proving a little tougher than I thought. One problem is the track is a little dirty off line so there is no room for mistakes.
JOHN HOPKINS 16th 1:35.636s
“I got over anxious on some cold tyres and I just got on it a bit too hard. I almost saved it but then it just snapped back and spit me off. It took me a while to get back into the session and I didn’t really get going until the final couple of laps. I’m looking forward to tomorrow and dropping the time a lot more that’s for sure. It seems like a long time since the test but all in all I like the track. It’s got a good surface and a good layout. I’ve definitely changed my riding style quite a bit since I came here before the start of the season. I’ve noticed the way I hang off the bike is quite a bit different. We’re quite a bit faster from when we tested here which is good. I didn’t use the set-up from the test and we went in quite a different way because of what we’ve learned during the season since then. It’s just to get the bike adapted to my change in riding style a little bit more.
PETER CLIFFORD DIRECTOR OF RACING
“We have spent the last few weeks getting excited about practice, so despite the fact that Garry has done a really good job getting on the second row of the grid, it’s only the last race of the year on Sunday that counts for anything.”
More, from a press release issued by Yamaha:
Provisional pole position for the Valencia MotoGP (November 1-3) came down to a dogfight between four-stroke pilots Max Biaggi (Marlboro Yamaha Team) and Alex Barros (Honda); the pair trading places at the top of the time sheets almost every lap of the hour-long qualifier. It was the Brazilian who came away with the honours, but only after prematurely ending the session in the gravel trap – three minutes from the showing of the chequered flag. Barros demolished Biaggi’s 2001 pole position time by nearly a second when he lapped the 4005m Spanish circuit in 1:33.584 – 0.054 seconds faster than the Italian’s 1:33.638.
Following close behind, only 0.003 seconds in arrears, Daijiro Kato (Honda, 1:33.64) claimed the third fastest time while Valentino Rossi (Honda) completed the front row. The 2002 MotoGP World Champion’s 1:34.159 relegated Shinya Nakano (Gauloises Yamaha Tech 3, 1:34.177) to the second row, but only by a mere 0.018 seconds. Carlos Checa (Marlboro Yamaha Team) spent the session focusing on a race set-up before producing a 1:34.264 in the closing stages to place his YZR-M1 sixth on the grid. Pre-season paces-setter Garry McCoy (Red Bull Yamaha WCM, 1:34.518) came away as the fastest Yamaha two-stroke but is looking to improve on his eighth position.
Marlboro Yamaha Team
Max Biaggi 2nd, 1:33.638: “I’m certainly not going to slow down just because this is my last race with Yamaha! For race conditions we’re already pretty good. We’ve certainly not got any of the problems we had in Australia, so we’re just doing routine set-up work, and if we can improve again tomorrow, we’ll be right up there. The new rear I used for my final run today upset the balance of the bike, maybe it gave me too much grip from the rear. But the race is 30 laps long, so one quick lap doesn’t mean much.”
Carlos Checa 6th, 1:34.264: “We’re in a better situation here, we’re much closer to the front, though we still need to improve and that’s never easy. We didn’t make any big changes today, just trying tyres and making small adjustments to the suspension. But I want to go at least half a second faster tomorrow, and I think the way forward is clear. I need to be able to keep rolling through the turns while at high angles of lean, and I need more stability on-gas through the last section of the track.”
Gauloises Yamaha Tech 3
Shinya Nakano 5th, 1:34.177: “It is good to be the second Yamaha four-stroke on the grid! At the beginning of this afternoon’s session we tried quite a lot of different things with the gearbox ratios, but by the end of the session I was posting fast consistent laps. I think what has helped is that I now have a much better understanding of what gear ratios I need to use on the four-stroke and also of how the engine braking system needs to be set up to allow deep braking. It means that I feel much more confident on the bike and can concentrate on my riding.”
Olivier Jacque 13th, 1:34.902: “MotoGP bikes aren’t easy to set up at the best of times, but when you only have one it can get really tricky. Trying to learn the bike at the same time as putting in a good performance is no picnic either. This afternoon we tried a different front-end chassis geometry that, in the end, didn’t work out and we lost a lot of time in the process. However I was pleasantly surprised at how well the bike performed at this stop and go circuit. It is definitely a more physical bike to ride compared to the two-stroke, and you can’t use all the power, but there is no doubt that the M1 goes well here. Hopefully it will allow me to improve my place on the grid significantly tomorrow.”
Red Bull Yamaha WCM
Garry McCoy 8th, 1:34.518: “I went quicker than that during the tests held here in February, but the track feels a little bumpier this time round – mainly on the entry into the corners, while under brakes. They seem like the bumps that can be caused by truck racing and F1. We’ve got to look at the data and see how we can overcome the problem; mainly we’ll focus on the front-end to improve the feel while the forks are compressed. I came here expecting that the two-strokes would give the four-strokes a hard time, especially with all the tighter corners, but looking at the times it doesn’t seem to be the case, yet. Still it’s only Friday so who knows.”
John Hopkins 16th, 1:35.636: “Well that session didn’t start off too well. I got into the last corner quite quick and then got on the power a little too enthusiastically and it pitched me off. I almost saved it, but in the end I was sliding down the gravel on my butt. It meant that I spent most of the session trying to get over that silly mistake. I started to get back into it near then end, which meant that we really didn’t make any improvements to the bike until then, and eventually the time wasn’t so bad. We’re pretty much going through things like race tyres, and race set-up. We started with the set-up we used at the beginning of the year at the tests, but with how much I’ve learnt during the season, and how much my riding style has improved in that time I’ve had to make quite a few changes to the bike. We just need to keep going in that direction tomorrow.”
Antena 3 Yamaha d’Antin
Norick Abe 19th, 1:35.955: “We did a test leading up to this weekend, and during that time the pain in my hand and shoulder was unbearable. Compared to that outing, how it feels today is much better, but it’s still difficult under brakes to hold on. It helped that Doctor Costa gave me a good massage before qualifying, and hopefully another session with him tomorrow morning may improve things further, but I know the more laps I do the tougher it will be. The irony is that laps are what I need right now if I want to learn how to really ride the four-stroke.”
José Luis Cardoso 20th, 1:35.964: “This morning was very good, and even through qualifying, right up until the last 15 minutes. The set-up was perfect for me. I could do fast and consistent times and I felt confident on the bike at every corner. But then when we wanted to go for a fast time in the final few minutes the engine lost power for some reason. We couldn’t see why so I jumped onto the second bike, but this felt completely different and there wasn’t enough time to dial it in. It’s ok, though, because I know we have the set-up we’re looking for already, so tomorrow should be a good day.”
More, from a press release issued by Suzuki:
TELEFONICA MoviStar riders Kenny Roberts Jr. and Sete Gibernau placed 11th and 14th in today’s first timed qualifying session for Sunday’s Valencia GP, the last round of the 2002 MotoGP season, claiming positions on the third and fourth rows of the provisional grid. And both riders had reasons to believe that they can cut their lap times significantly in tomorrow’s final session.
Roberts had a personal reason for a comparatively slow start to the last weekend of the year. Last Sunday his grandfather Buster Roberts passed away, and he stayed home in the United States for a day longer than usual to be with his father and the rest of the family, arriving in Valencia only last night. This has left him unusually fatigued for today’s first practice sessions. All the same, he was fourth fastest in the morning free practice session.
Gibernau was confident he could improve, after missing his opportunity at the end of the practice session. In any case, he was happy with the settings his team had found for his machine at the tight and twisty Ricardo Tormo circuit, and looking forward to a second chance in tomorrow afternoon’s final timed session.
The Valencia GP, which closes the first ever four-stroke/two-stroke MotoGP season, has happy memories for both riders. Last year Gibernau won his first GP here, with Roberts a close third, the team’s best result of the season.
KENNY ROBERTS – 11th position, 1:34.641
“After the passing of my grandfather, I arrived here late last night. I stayed a day longer than normal to help out my Dad and get things planned. The family have been real supportive. We’re all saddened, but my Dad has a lot of people round him now trying to help him, and he knows that we all feel the same as he does. The late arrival delays everything for me. I was trying to get used to the time this morning – it makes a long day out of it. We breezed through the morning session, but we ran into some problems in the afternoon. The session was going okay until we made a couple of wrong adjustments, that put us into catch-up mode until about seven minutes before the end. Then we went back to what we had before, that felt better. We still have a long way to go, and we need to make a big jump. We’re about three-quarters-of-a-second off where we need to be, so hopefully we can find something in the garage tonight that will help out the situation.”
SETE GIBERNAU – 14TH position, 1:35.280
“There were three stages to that qualifying session. At first it was not so good, and I was struggling to find a set-up that felt comfortable. My team managed to find a good improvement – it wasn’t night and day, but it felt better. I was on used tyres, and I was looking forward to the end of the session with new tyres to go for a time, but we got the planning wrong and missed the chance. It’s no problem. We have some more ideas to make the bike better still for tomorrow, and we’ll have another chance then to improve our grid position for the race.”
GARRY TAYLOR – Team Manager
“I’m sure that everybody in the paddock will join the team in expressing sympathy to Kenny Senior and Junior after the death of Buster Roberts. It’s hardly the way to go into a race meeting, but Kenny is a supreme professional and he’s dealing with it in his own manner. Both riders are happy there is more to come tomorrow, so we’re looking forward to that.”
More, from a press release issued by Proton Team KR:
McWilliams Beats Bug to be top Two-Stroke Again
Jeremy McWilliams: Seventh, 1:34.458
Nobuatsu Aoki: 17th, 1:35.887
David Garcia: 21st, 1:36.102
Proton Team KR rider Jeremy McWilliams shrugged off a bout of food poisoning today to put his three-cylinder lightweight KR3 on the second row of the provisional grid for Sunday’s last GP of the season, fastest two-stroke. This is another success for the 38-year-old Ulsterman, who claimed the Proton’s first-ever pole position two weeks ago at the Australian GP.
Team-mate Nobuatsu Aoki was struggling with set-up problems, and ended up 1.4 seconds slower but three rows further back; while wild card rider David Garcia was less than half-a-second slower than Aoki, in spite of having to make a huge adjustment from his normal production-based 600cc Supersport machine to the thoroughbred GP prototype racer.
The Valencia GP is the final round of this year’s first MotoGP season, pitting 500cc two-strokes like the lightweight three-cylinder Proton against the heavier but more powerful new-generation 990cc four-strokes. It is also the last race for the Proton KR3, after six years of development as a challenger to the 500cc two-stroke factory machines. Next season, Proton Team KR will be fielding their own V5 990cc four-stroke for the same pair of riders.
Today’s practice took place in warm, sunny conditions. There are two more hour-long sessions tomorrow before Sunday’s race, the 16th and final round of the world championship.
Jeremy McWilliams
“I woke up with food poisoning this morning, and I’m not feeling too good – but being fastest two-stroke makes me feel a bit better. That is always my target, and I hope we keep it tomorrow. I’m making time on the corner entries, and getting some incredible lean angles with a soft front Bridgestone tyre. As always, I’m losing time on the straights, even though there aren’t many of them here. The main straight is quite short, but I’m the slowest bike down it, 25km/h down on the fastest. But we have no problems, and some more tyres to try tomorrow. And I should feel a little better myself by then too.”
Nobuatsu Aoki
“I’m struggling with front grip into the corners, and that is what you need with this bike to make up for the slower top speed. The front tyre is skipping and sliding, and there is no feeling. It’s a real problem. We did a couple of things to the front fork, but without any improvement. I think it is a weight-balance problem. Tomorrow we will try and put less weight on the front with different steering clamps. I hope that works better for us … the settings that worked so well at Phillip Island didn’t work at all, but this track is so different that it’s another story.”
Davis Garcia
“It’s been five months since I rode this bike, so I am very happy with my time so far. I’m close to Aoki, and within a couple of tenths of Harada and Abe, who have been racing their bikes almost every weekend. The bike feels completely different from the last time I rode it – each lap I’ve been changing my position, but little by little I’ve been getting more comfortable, and I am confident I can go faster tomorrow.”
Chuck aksland – Team Manager
“Jeremy did exceptionally well, especially considering that he is pretty poorly. Nobuatsu is struggling for front-end feel, but we have some ideas on that. David did a very good job, only 2.5 seconds off pole in his first time on the bike for a while.”
More, from a press release issued by Kawasaki:
Pitt On Steep Learning Curve at Valencia
Valencia, Spain – Friday, November 1st, 2002: Australian rider Andrew Pitt continued up the steep learning curve in only his third GP at the Ricardo Tormo circuit today, running well inside the qualifying time for Sunday’s Valencia GP.
Pitt, who took over after the first of Kawasaki’s four-race shake-down tests for their all-new 990cc Ninja ZX-RR, at least had the advantage of some prior circuit knowledge for this final GP of the year, and set a lap time just three seconds behind provisional pole qualifier Alex Barros.
The lime-green machine has several revisions for this race – including the latest evolution version of a chassis introduced two weeks ago at Phillip Island, and a fresh round of software revisions for the pioneering flat-slide fuel injection system.
Current chassis and suspension work is aimed at improving corner exit speed, with the all-new machine already close to being competitive, even up-against race-hardened competitors approaching the end of their first MotoGP season. The Kawasaki was 22nd in lap times, but 11th overall in terms of top speed, recording 295.1km/h on Valencia’s short straight, less than 10km/h shower than Daijiro Kato’s pace-setting Honda.
Andrew Pitt – 22nd in 1’36.659: “The new chassis definitely works better on this track than the previous one from the Australian Grand Prix two weeks ago. Whereas Phillip Island is a fast and sweeping circuit, here at Valencia there are many tight corners, which makes it more difficult to keep the front wheel on the ground. The new chassis seems to get more weight on the front, and makes it easier to control the bike. With every lap, I’m getting more comfortable, and towards the end of the session, I could have gone even faster, but I made some small mistakes on my last run. I missed out on a lap in the 1.35’s, so I’ll take care of that tomorrow – my aim is not to be 22nd again!”
Harald Eckl – Team Manager: “It doesn’t reflect in Andrew’s grid position yet, but we keep improving the bike and gathering valuable data in every session. Today, we further improved throttle response and engine characteristics, and we learned a lot about our new chassis. Andrew still needs more track time as the characteristics of the Valencia circuit are very different again, but I have no doubt he’ll be faster tomorrow.”
