Gavin Foster
The day of reckoning has come, and we’re still not really any the wiser.
We’ll have to wait for the second MotoGP of the year at Welkom’s Phakisa raceway on Sunday to find out if Honda’s 1 000cc V5 RC 211V is really that much quicker than everything else in the new premier class of motorcycle racing, or whether the Valentino Rossi factor is what makes the difference.
During the rain-soaked Japanese MotoGP the rest put up a great fight, but world champion Rossi and his Honda still managed to take home the silver. But things are always uncertain in the rain the if/but factor comes to the fore, and everybody goes home wondering.
After all, Kenny Roberts, Max Biaggi, Garry McCoy and just about every other top contender managed to fall off in the rain. What we need is a fair fight, in the dry, to stop all the conjecture.
Although he’s without doubt the biggest talent out there, the omens are good that Rossi’s not going to have it as easy this year as pre-season lap times on the big Honda indicated. The Japanese Grand Prix practice was held in the dry, and the 11 quickest riders all circulated within a second of each other, with the entire field coming within three seconds of the time that claimed pole position for Rossi.
That was closer than any grid yet in the half-century history of 500cc grand prix racing, and it happened in the very first 1 000cc MotoGP.
What did become evident at Suzuka was that the powers-that-be have taken a huge leap forward by allowing the manufacturers to run 1 000cc multi-cylinder four-stroke machines against the 500cc two-strokes that have ruled the roost for over a quarter of a century.
Suddenly the sound is back, the excitement is back and the atmosphere is different. Gone well, almost are the whispering two-strokes that go like stink but all sound the same, and back are the howling four-strokes that ruled the roost in the days of Hailwood, Agostini and Redman.
You can bet your bottom dollar that people who couldn’t be bothered to travel to Welkom to watch the 2001 South African Grand Prix are going to take the trouble this weekend to listen to the 2002 version.