http://www.cyclenews.com/Picar en la portada.
la portada para Carlos en el mismo dia de victorias de Valentino Rossi en MotoGP y Ben Spies en el AMA.
Uno de los problemas que tenemos en Motociclimso es el gran número de revistas que emprimimos...esto nos limita aun más al fijar la hora del cierre.
Para USA he escrito un reporaje de SBK Utah de 26,000 caracters para Roadracing World (mensual) y un articulo sobre Carlos (Carlito´s Way...haciendo uso del titulo de la pelicula de Brian de Palma y con Al Pecini y Seanb Penn) de 16,000 caracterss.
Como el espacio de internet es infinita y me da verguenza personal el pobre trato que hemos dado en este caso os pego los dos articulos...pero no me pides traducciones...que estoy haciendo maletas para ir a Alemania...
Double Winner Checa Closes Hard on Bayliss
By Dennis Noyes
It was only a matter of time, but now Carlos Checa (Ten Kate Honda) has expanded the elite list of riders to win both in World Superbike and the premier class (500 and MotoGP) of Grand Prix racing. “I felt I could have had both wins in Valencia and we were strong in Assen too, but in the tracks I have not raced it we are at a disadvantage…unless no one has raced there. That was the case here and, except for that crash in qualifying, things went well at this track that none of us knows, “said Checa (in Spanish) after completing his double, his first two wins in WSBK, taking Honda to their 100th World Superbike win.
He summed his feelings up like this: “Your mind plays tricks sometimes and shrinks time. I know that by the calendar my last win before today was ten years ago, but the two days don’t seem so far apart. The sensation is the same, but now I feel more able to assimilate the success and start thinking about the next race. Ten years is a long time without a win, but I have been at the front many times and was maybe a little unlucky sometimes, and the last two years I was on the wrong bike and the wrong tires. Am I thinking about the championship? That is what everyone asks. Well, yes, but not so much now as tomorrow. Now I just want to enjoy this moment after a long wait. I knew when I first rode the Honda in practice last year for the Suzuki 8 Hours that this is my kind of bike. And now the 2008 Fire Blade is better, quicker turning, and really a lot of fun to race. I want to dedicate this race to Wayne Rainey, a good friend who has given me good advice during hard times.”
Checa left Salt Lake City on a morning flight, headed out for Japan where he will test the factory CBR1000RR endurance racer and then take part on the weekend of June 6-7 in the 300 Kilometers of Suzuka, a warm-up for the Suzuka 8 Hours. And he will be thinking on that long flight to Tokyo of the sudden turn in his favor that the World Superbike Championship has taken after he won both races and outscored pre-season favorites Troy Bayliss (50-0) and Noriyuki Haga (50-10).
Checa had not won a race since June 14, 1998 (when he beat the late Norick Abe and Sete Gibernau in the 500 race at the Grand Prix of the Community of Madrid) and, amazingly, it was the first win outside of Spain for this evergreen veteran of 13 years in the Grands Prix, now a rookie and twelve races into his first World Superbike season.
Bayliss (Xerox Ducati) came into Utah holding a huge 78 point lead and leaves with that lead, over Checa, now cut to 28. Haga (Yamaha Italy), who raced with a right collarbone broken in four places, has now slipped to fifth while up-and-coming Max Neukirchner (Alstare Suzuki), who has been the leading scorer over the last three events (the last six races), has come from ninth to third on the points table since he was knocked off on the last corner of the last lap at Valencia and went pointless on the day.
The bad news for Ducati is that, while the factory team spent the entire winter in an exhaustive test program for the new 1098 RS, the new Fire Blade arrived late to the Ten Kate workshops in Holland and is now, according to Ronald Ten Kate, “making less power than last year’s bike and there is still a lot of development left to do.”
For Bayliss it was almost a repetition of the previous race weekend at Monza, but whereas at Monza he was third in race one and retired in race two with a minor problem (a leaking clutch oil seal), this time he crashed in race one and was forced to pit in race two when the gearbox refused to shift.
Return to America
World Superbike has been absent from these shores since the race in 2004 when Chris Vermeulen scored his Ten Kate Honda double at Laguna Seca. Dorna pushed WSBK out of the California circuit after the SBK had taken over from Dorna after consecutive financial failures (and very small crowds) at the 1993 and 1994 USGPs.
That has left SBK looking for a new North American home for the last three years. After failing to find a suitable venue in Canada and Mexico and after being unable to finally close a deal with the safe but slow Barber circuit in Leeds, Alabama, a deal was finally done with Miller Motorsports Park. The FIM´s Claude Danis, responsible for safety, says that Miller Motorsports Park is “as safe as Qatar as far as run-off area is concerned.”
There were other comparisons with the Losail circuit outside Doha, Qatar. Both tracks have a long home straight of almost identical length, but the elevation at Miller, nearly a mile above sea level, knocked off somewhere around 10% of the power, producing a best top speed of 190.801 mp/h by Bayliss on the Ducati compared to a best of 193.901 by Neukirchner on the Suzuki at Losail.
Both tracks also have in common an arid setting which allows sand and dust to be blown onto the track making the track especially slippery when a rider wanders off line into the marbles.
In Qatar this problem was partially solved by rimming the track with a five foot wide strip of green Astroturf. It keeps some sand off the track and also gives a tidier look, but the “rug” also has a tendency to roll up when a MotoGP bike accelerates over it.
Qualifying and Superpole
With only one hour of free practice before the first qualifying session on Friday, World Superbike teams anxiously gleaned set-up, electronic and gearing information from their AMA Superbike counterparts.
Ducati´s references were from 2006 when Neil Hodgson and Ben Bostrom rode 999s on Dunlops, but enough info was swapped between the teams running Japanese bikes to give the World SBK riders a bit of a head start.
Fonsi Nieto observed some significant differences between the Suzuki GSX.R 1000s from Yoshimura and his own Alstare Suzuki team. “They have a lot more grip than we do and can get a way with running much harder suspension settings. If we tried to run the bikes that hard we would just spin.”
Nieto also observed, “the altitude really kills the acceleration. Top speed is good, but acceleration is really tame. The bike feels like a big Supersport. The lack of horsepower and the amount of grip offered by the track means that I can run with no traction control and keep the bike from spinning up too much.”
Checa agreed initially, but eventually decided to run traction control with a mild setting. When he crashed in the opening quarter hour of the final qualifying session it was because of a traction control electronics failure. “The TC quit a couple of laps before. It wasn’t working at all, but I thought I could carry on without it and ended up high-siding at turn five…a real high-sider like when I used to race 500s. I raced without traction control when the system failed in Valencia in race two, but here we need it, at least I do on this bike.”
Finally Troy Corser was quickest after the two qualifying sessions with a time of 1´49.224, just about a tenth of a second slower that the AMA Superbike qualifying record set back in 2006, but there were twelve riders in the same second and the first twenty riders were covered by 1.5 seconds. By contrast, the AMA Superbike field had only three riders in the same second and only five in 1.5 seconds.
Noriyuki Haga crashed in the final qualifying session when he made a mistake attempting to pass Sofuoglu on the inside when the Turk was already nearly at the apex of the corner. He broke his collarbone in four places and, naturally, most American journalists assumed that he would not ride. World SBK scribes were not surprised to learn that Nori would, in fact ride, and, though it didn’t happen, some even believed he might win. Such is the legend of Nitro Nori, who is, along with Aaron Slight, generally considered the best SBK rider not to win the title. (Last year he was second by just two points, the closest ever WSBK points battle.)
It was normal that journalists would interest themselves in a comparison of lap times set by the best men from the two series on very similar machines but on different tires. Neither the AMA times set in 2005 nor the WSBK times set in qualifying were done with qualifying tires. Dunlop stopped using Q tires in AMA Superbike after the Ducati team changed from Michelin to Dunlop after the 2004 season and in World Superbike no qualifiers are allowed until the free session after the final qualifying session.
The 16 fastest qualifiers are then given three Q tires and are free to use one or two in the afternoon free session, saving at least one for Superpole.
The first hint of how fast Superpole would be came when Checa turned a 1´48.8 in the final minutes of the session. In Superpole Checa was fourth from last to come out, corresponding to his fourth best time in qualifying a best time of 1´48.504 set only minutes before by Neukirchner.
“I knew my lap was good, but when I saw my time on my cockpit timing screen I had to blink and look at it twice. I first thought the one was a seven. I was surprised to do a time of 1´48.193.”
He would be joined on the front row by Neukirchner, Bayliss and Corser.
Race one: Checa Breaks Honda´s 16 Race Losing Streak
It is true that Ten Kate Honda won the championship last year, but there was no one there to catch the bouquet when World Champion James Toseland tied the knot with Yamaha Tech3 en MotoGP. Honda came into Utah carrying a 16 race losing streak…it was on August 5, at Brands Hatch last year when Toseland won them both and extended his lead to 66 points. He would finally win the title, but by a mere two points, and without James or any Honda rider taking another win.
So there were some anxious faces in the Ten Kate garage. Ronald and Gerrit Ten Kate and all the crew knew Checa had the pace. He just needed a clean start and a trouble free race…and them there was last minute confusion on the grid when another rider parked in Nieto´s grid slot…then Fabrizio killed his engine on the front row and the start was delayed. Mechanics returned to the grid, tire warmers went on and the whole pre-race wait and warm-up lap rigmarole was repeated and race one was shortened by a lap from 21 to 20 to avoid having the riders return to the pits to take on extra fuel to compensate for the additional warm-up lap. (Most teams calculate fuel consumption based on long practice runs and then add an additional liter to get the rider home after the checkered-flag lap.
Checa, for once, got a good start, but seemed to short shift too soon to second and was dropped back to eighth doing into turn one. Bayliss lead from Neukirchner, Biaggi and Haga, with Checa managing to climb back to fifth by the end of the lap.
On Lap two Neukirchner blasted past Bayliss near the end of the home straight, calling into question the accuracy of the top speed given by the promoter. (Once again, the measurement may have been taken too near the corner where the riders of the fastest bikes, certainly either the Suzuki or Honda 1000cc fours, were already sitting up to brake.
Haga, riding with a load of painkillers in his body, somehow held on to the lead group, though he was passed by team mate Corser on lap two, the same lap that saw Checa move past Bayliss into second and begin piling it on to try and cut back Neukrichner’s small lead. By the end of lap four Checa was into the lead but with Neukirchner and Bayliss very close behind.
Biaggi ran off the track on lap two and dropped to 17th while Regis Laconi (Kawasaki) crashed out of fifth on lap five. Xaus, who was battling the Frenchman, had to pick up his Ducati and run off the track to avoid fallen rider and his green machine.
And at the end of that same fifth lap, Troy Bayliss, who had moved into second in front of Neukirchner, high-sided out of the final corner and was nearly run over by Corser. There were some anxious seconds as Bayliss was passed on the inside by Nieto and Jakob Smrz (Ducati) and on the outside by Karl Muggeridge (Honda).
Next drama came a lap later when Haga crashed right in front of Smrz, but the Czech rider got past and moved up to fourth.
With Checa firmly in control and not forced to even lap in the 1´49s, the remaining excitement would come from young Michel Fabrizio on the remaining factory Xerox Ducati.
Fabrizio nearly stalled off the line and was down in 14th at the end of lap one. (It was Fabrizio who stalled his machine at the start of race one in Australia and has hit hard from behind by the Kawasaki of Vittorio Iannuzzo). The little Italian was coming up through the pack and was into fifth by lap 12. Over the final laps he got passed Smrz and pressured Corser. Corser reacted and pushed past Neukirchner into second and then, with three laps to go, Fabrizio, still running low 1´51s when Neukirchner was into the high 51´s. It was a mistake by the German on lap 18 (producing a slow 1´52.6 lap time) that opened the door to Fabrizio and gave him his second podium placing of the season behind Checa and Corser.
After the race Checa revealed that he had allowed his team to talk him into using the same soft compound front (Pirelli´s “A” tire) that he had used for most of practice and qualifying. “The Pirelli technicians were insisting on the hard front. I tried the harder tire in practice and it wasn’t bad, but my crew chief was so sure that the “A” was perfect for the set-up and the way that I was riding the bike that I used it. I was worried a bit and that is why I tried so hard to get a big lead, so that if I had trouble at the end I’d be OK. All the front tires get chewed here, but mine went all the way.”
Checa had waited nearly ten years to pick up this third career win, but the next one would come much quicker.
Race two: Checa Gives Honda 100th SBK Victory
The Xerox Ducati team managed to rebuild Bayliss´ crash-damaged 1098 in less than two hours but when they fired it up there was some small (undisclosed) problem that caused them to revert to the back-up bike.
Pirelli released information about tire choices just after the start, and, as Bayliss got another holeshot, the Pirelli tire choice sheet showed that every rider on the front four rows was on the medium-hard “B” rear except Rubén Xaus who had chosen the hardest compound (“C”).
The front choices were more varied. Checa has stayed with the soft front. Other riders who has used the soft “Z” in race one, Lorenzo Lanzi (Ducati) and Xaus had now switched to the medium-hard “B”, but Yukio Kagayama (Alstare Suzuki), after fading to eighth in race one, changed to the soft “A” front.
The track temperature had risen from 102 to 116, but Checa and his team again decided to go with the soft front.
Haga looked completely miserable before the race, holding an ice pack to his broken collarbone and grimacing in the garage, but nothing but a denial by the chief medical officer could have kept him off the grid (which makes you wonder if a responsible doctor would let a man with his collarbone broken in four places start a motorcycle race).
Again Bayliss got the holeshot and again Checa found a way to waste his pole position privilege by running wide into turn one up onto the slippery track above the racing line, dropping briefly back to eighth before retaking a couple of places on lap one.
Russell Holland (D.F. Honda) and American Jason Pridmore (Alto Evolution Honda) left the track together at turn one.
Corser, fresh from a race one podium, led the first two laps but was passed down the home straight by Neukirchner at the start of lap three. Corser, between races, asked for a bit less traction control in hopes of getting a better launch onto the home straight out of the final second gear corner, but the Yamaha R1 is losing out this season on sheer power to Suzuki and Honda. With Neukirchner leading, Corser was now coming under pressure from Bayliss.
By lap three Checa was fifth looking for a way past Biaggi on the Ducati, Biaggi, always a hard man to pass, was dropping back from the three leaders, losing touch with the Neukirchner and Bayliss but holding up Checa on the corner exits..The Spaniard found the easy way past, firing the white Ten Kate CBR1000RR past at the end of the straight. (Clearly and as is usually the case the top speeds were measured too far down the straight and timing and scoring was probably attributing top speed to riders who were actually on slower bikes and were therefore able to brake later.)
It then took Checa only another two laps to move into second, after passing Corser and then putting a hard pass on Bayliss. Bayliss fought back, but his lap time on from laps four and five were 1´50.0 and then a slow 1´51.2 while Checa was running 1.49.8 on lap four and then 1.50.3 on the lap he passed both Corser and Bayliss. After than Checa ran two 1´49.6s, and a string of three low 1´50´s, slipping under Neukirchner at the esses.
Checa was holding tighter lines than the German and the Honda looked nimble in direction changes. Once in front Checa ran a couple of low 1´50s and then broke his young rival with a new lap record of 1´49.703 followed by two more high 1´49s and an unanswerable string of 1´50s that pulled him 4 seconds clear.
That slow lap on lap five from Bayliss was the first indication of the gear changing problem that sent him in the pits and out of the points on lap 6. On that same lap Ruben Xaus high-sided and crawled painfully off the track (reminding veteran observers of the crash by Mick Doohan at Laguna Seca en 1993 when he was at first unable to get up after crashing at the left-hander after the Corkscrew).
Xaus broke no bones but received a hard blow to the back. Bayliss, meanwhile, was sent back out after a mechanic had yanked on the gear lever to free it. Bayliss looked reluctant to go out, but this would be the best chance for Ducati Corse to confirm that the linkage was working.
While Checa pulled away from Neukirchner, Corser and Biaggi battled for third, a battle that seemed to be going the Australian’s way after he overtook Max on lap 14, but two laps later Corser lost that hard front tire and went down and out.
But as Max took over third on his own, his board gave him the bad news that Fabrizio, after another of his terrible starts (he was twelfth on the opening laps in spite of starting off the front row), was coming hard.
Fabrizio was past the injured Haga on lap 16 and past Biaggi two laps later for his second podium of the day and third of the year.
The final position changes on the final lap occurred when Kagayama ever so carefully passed his friend Haga and when Gregorio Lavilla (Paul Bird Honda) lost three places on the last lap to Makoto Tamada (Kawasaki), Aryton Badovini (Kawasaki) and Sofuoglu, dropping from twelfth to fifteenth just ahead of Roberto Rolfo (Honda) riding with a badly healed collarbone and a shoulder injury.
Checa´s second win on the day gave Honda their 100th win in World Superbike and allowed the Ten Kate rider to recover 50 points, leaving Miller only 28 points back of Bayliss who has not scored in his last three starts, giving up a potential 75 points with a DNF, a crash and a 22nd place after a long stop in the pits for repairs.
The next round is on Neukirchner´s turf at the Nürburgring in Germany, a circuit that has not been used for World Championship competition since the German Grand Prix of 1997.
Notes
Bragging rights over the race record set on race tires stayed with Dunlop and Ben Spies. The record of 1´49.193 was set in qualifying but on a Dunlop race tire in 2006 (Dunlop stopped using qualifiers in AMA Superbike after the 2005 season). The race lap record did eventually go to Carlos Checa whose time of 1´49.703 beat the old record, also from 2006, set by Jake Zemke in 1´49.782. Dunlop´s Jim Allen would not speculate on how fast the AMA Superbike riders would have been if they had again raced on the peripheral circuit used in this occasion exclusively by the World Superbike riders, but it would be normal for the times to be faster, and it would also be only logical to assume that Dunlop’s best race tires would produce faster lap times under equal circumstances than the mass-produced Pirelli production tires. The last time World Superbike and AMA Superbike shared the same track, Ben Bostrom on Dunlop with a Honda CRB1000RR in HRC trim set the fastest race lap with a time of 1´25.961 compared to Chris Vermeulen’s fastest lap en route to his double win at Laguna on the Ken Kate Honda CBR1000RR with a time of 1´26.798.
More on tires: Giorgio Barbier, the competition director for Pirelli, told American journalists that no specific request for offer has as yet been made by the Daytona Motorsports Group, but that Pirelli would study the request. Pirelli currently supply control tires to World Superbike, the British Superbike Championship, the Canadian Superbike Championship and, in the United States, to the MotoST Endurance Championship. Barbier told a reporter, “I believe it will be difficult to compete in price with Dunlop in this market where they have the capacity to build tires (in the USA) while we will have to ship a lot of tires.” How many tires? Pirelli brought 2,500 tires to Utah for the two races of a the single Superbike class. In Europe when all classes, Superbike, Supersport and the 1000cc and 600cc Superstock support classes, compete, Pirelli brings 6,500 tires, frequently building special options to suit specific circuits.
Kenny Roberts spoke candidly about the balance of power between World Superbike and MotoGP. “The biggest problem that Carmelo (Ezpeleta) has is that he is letting the fox run the chicken house. The Flammini´s (Maurizio and Paolo) had the balls to stand up to the Japanese and now they control the rule making. Bernie Ecclestone always said you can’t let manufacturers run a championship. The Flammini group runs its own show the way the DMG is going to do, but now they have to get rid of traction control. Carmelo can’t do it because the manufactures don’t want to, but this championship has do it even if BMW is counting on their electronics to win.
As regards the DMG, Roberts said, “They are still changing things and they haven’t got in right yet, but if they get rid of traction control, go to a single tire and cut back horsepower they will make a big improvement. Right now the AMA Supersport Championship looks good but the Superbike class is all screwed up.”
Roberts had visitors from Japan at his ranch in Hickman the week before the SBK race. Noriyuki Haga and Yukio Kagayama, accompanied by the wives, stopped in. Roberts and Haga were engaged in a marathon 36 holes of golf with Haga winning in the morning. “I took him to In and Out for a hamburger and after that in the afternoon I had him,” said Kenny. Kagayama showed up at Miller with a bruised hand after firing Robert’s 50 caliber “Eastwood” pistol, an oversized version of the Magnum 44.
World Superbike needs American riders. Jason Pridmore, a former World Endurance Chamnpion with lots of European experience, has now signed ofnto replace Luca Morelli in the Alto Evolution Honda team for the rest of the season. Bolder Motorsports of Bolder, Colorado, is planning to enter the 2009 series with satellite Ducati 1098s and at least one American rider, and there have been talks between World SBK teams and several American Superbike riders, among them Josh Hayes and Jake Zemke. The biggest problem is that World Supersport teams generally pay less that AMA teams, although the shrinking dollar is beginning to make Euro contracts look a little better.
Who will replace Troy Bayliss in the Ducati Corse team in 2009? The strong weekend by Michel Fabrizio, his best performance of the year, strengthens his likelihood to continue next season, but Ducati traditionally seeks a veteran leader. It probably won’t be Carlos Checa because Ten Kate holds an option to his contract and the Spaniard has said that he is very happy with Honda, the company he began his career with in 2004. Rubén Xaus has applied for the job, but he will have to turn his season around to be considered. Looking over the grid, the most promising young rider is Max Neukirchner, but he is very near to signing a two year deal with Alstare Suzuki. So far there is an agreement in principal but he said at Miller that he had not signed yet. Wildest guess of the weekend? Noriyuki Haga (who raced a Ducati in 2004 and won six races, finishing third in the series). For sure Ducati need a rider who knows the tracks and has proven what he can do with big four strokes.
The unusual rosary of corner names was amusing to European journalists to recite but one Scotsman made a good observation. “If I were naming 23 corners I think I would start with the names of American world champions in F1, Grand Prix and Superbike.” And before we got to such names as Attitude and Bad Attitude we would have gone past turns named for Roberts, Spencer, Lawson, Rainey, Schwantz, Roberts Junior, Kocinski, Merkel, Polen, Russell and Edwards…and that would leave plenty of room for American F1 champs Phil Hill and Mario Andretti. But, in general, the strange names were a big hit with riders, especially since the names of the corners are displayed at each, making it easier for the riders to identify to their crew chiefs were they are having problems.
Fonsi Nieto wore a stars and stripes helmet with an eagle on the side, a tribute to America. His Suzuki was also in new colors: Globasol, the company that owns Pepe.Phon, the team’s sponsor..
The 51,000 three-day figure was floated but never given officially. If true it would place over 30,000 fans at the track on Sunday, easily the biggest crowd ever to attend a motorsports event at Miller.
Carlos Checa´s younger brother David was on crutches, still recovering from his big crash at Assen that left him with a dislocated hip and soft tissue damage. The main reason for making the trip was to learn the track in short stints so that he will be familiar with it next season. He expects to be healed by Nürburgring of June 15th.
There are new tracks on the horizon, or rather a return to an old one. The FGSport is close to a deal to take the Championship to Kyalami, South Africa in 2009. Sentul, Indonesia (where an event was scheduled and cancelled for this year) is unlikely. There continue to be talks with Barber Motorsports Park, outside Leeds, Alabama, but AMA riders told their World SBK counterparts that the track was too slow and needed at very least another 300 yards of home straight.
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Carlitos´ Way
By Dennis Noyes
(How the Suzuka Eight Hours converted a “burned-out MotoGP veteran” into a World SBK title contender)
Written by Dennis Noyes
Nurburgring, Germany, June 5, 2008
When Spaniard Carlos Checa won his last race, prior to his big double at Miller Motorsports Park, Bill Clinton was just into his second term, Valentino Rossi was a 250 rookie, Madonna was top of the pop charts, Mick Doohan and Carl Fogarty were the champions and dominant riders in the 500 Grand Prix and World Superbike championships.
Nobody would have guessed at Jarama, just north of Madrid, when Checa, then a 25 year-old rising star riding a Honda 180 horse power NSR500 two stroke for Sito Pons, that Carlos´ next win would come just days short of ten years later in World Superbike on a production-derived Honda producing at least 40 horse power more.
From 250 rookie to 500 star
A little history: Carlos’ first GP ride was as a wild card in 125 at the Grand Prix of Europe in 1993 at the Circuit of Catalunya. He started the 1994 season riding a Honda for Team Pons and with the idea that he would have a couple of seasons to adjust to 250 racing. In his first )and only) full 250 season he was 12th overall with a best result of seventh at the USGP at Laguna Seca and beating future 500 World Champion Kenny Roberts Junior that day. 1995 was the year that Pons hoped to see Checa score wins and fight for the title, but all that changed when Pons´ 500 rider, Alberto Puig, had the horrible crash in qualifying at Le Mans he was called up from 250 to replace Alberto Puig after his terrible crash at the French G.P. of that season, the crash that eventually ended Puig´s promising career. So much for the two-year learning opportunity in 250. Checa had just scored his best 250 result, a solid fourth back of Ralf Waldmann, Max Biaggi and Tady Okada. Suddenly he was on a 500. He scored two sevenths places that season, coming on strong in the final three races of the season in Brazil, Argentina and his home circuit in Catalunya. He crashed out battling for the lead with future 500 World Champion, Alex Criville, and recorded the race´s fastest lap. In 1996, his first full season of 500, he was 8th overall.. His first win came near the end of the 1996 season at the Circuit of Catalunya. At 23 he beat Mick Doohan by 6.5 seconds. Checa had arrived. After a so-so 1997 season (eighth again) he was off to a great start in 1998, battling for the points lead and taking a big win at mid-season at Jarama.
But Checa’s career nearly ended just three weeks after that Jarama win over the late Norifumi Abe and Sete Gibernau. A huge crash at Donington Park´s Craner Curves led to life-threatening complications when doctors removed his spleen. His parents were called up from Barcelona and a priest was standing by. It was a near thing.
Developing four strokes with Yamaha and Ducati
Checa, encouraged by Wayne Rainey, left Honda and went to Yamaha. The split with Sito Pons was acrimonious and Checa himself second guesses himself even today and wonders what would have happened if he had stayed with Honda. He would be winless over the rest of his GP career and, considering that he was on the podium 24 times during his long career in Grand Prix racing’s premier class, he was unlucky on several occasions not to add more victories. To give only one of several examples: in 2001 the Brazilian Grand Prix was red-flagged with Rossi leading Checa by a bike length after 4 laps. In the second part of the race Checa was holding enough of a lead to have been winner on corrected time, but was balked by a lapped rider on a twin (Anthony West) on the final lap and, although he beat Rossi by .052 of a second, he was second, again, by .143 on aggregate time to the Italian.
Checa stayed with Yamaha through the 2004 season and was one of the three riders who developed the Yamaha M1 990cc four stroke for the MotoGP class, although he often found himself in disagreement with John Kocinski and Max Biaggi over direction.
When Ducati, after a poor 2004 season, fired Troy Bayliss, Checa took over the Australian’s ride on the Desmosedici. After struggling with the Ducati over the first half of the season, he began to put up good results over the final six races of 2005, scoring two podiums and outscoring his team mate Loris Capirossi 79-65 over the last half-dozen starts of the season. But even before that hot streak began he had already been replaced by fellow Spaniard Sete Gibernau.
Checa´s stock was up due to his late season run and he agreed to a deal with Sito Pons (patching up an old quarrel between the two) as Max Biaggi´s team mate on the Honda Camel team, but when Honda black-balled Biaggi because of remarks the mercurial Italian had made about the Repsol Honda factory team, Camel sponsorship was withdrawn and the Pons team folded, leaving Checa with a signed but worthless contract. Worst of all, he had one practice session of the RC211V fitted with the best Michelin and believes he would have been competitive id the Pons deal had not failed.
Two frustrating years
That left Checa to choose between forced retirement or Dunlop’s development team (Yamaha Tech3). He accepted the challenge and led Dunlop development in a series dominated by Michelin and Bridgestone but ended the 2006 season 15th, his lowest finish since his first full season in the premier class in 1996.
Carlos considered retirement, but signed on for one last go-round with the under-funded LC Honda team on Bridgestone and soon discovered that the 800cc version of the Honda RC212V was built to the scale of Dani Pedrosa and that, while HRC made some attempts to adapt the factory bike to Nicky Hayden’s stature, the satellite riders were left to try and adapt themselves to a bike that simply didn’t fit them. The next bad news for Carlos was that Bridgestone was concentrating almost completely on building tires for the Ducati, Suzuki and Kawasaki factory teams.
“Once in a while I would get to try a good tire but when I asked to use it in a race they would say that there could not produce enough tires for all of us. It was a horrible season. Honda was not developing the satellite RC212Vs and we were not getting good tires. I was frustrated because I knew I was still fast and that I could be competitive but I had learned the hard way that in MotoGP if you don’t have the good stuff and you try and ride over your head to compensate you end up crashing. I was thinking after the first races of retiring,” explained Carlos.
The Suzuka ride
Then something unexpected happened. Honda was out to win what would have been their eleventh win in a row in the classic Suzuka Eight Hours endurance race, a round of the FIM World Endurance Championship. The number one team would consist of James Toseland (already a World Superbike champion with Ducati in 2004 and en route to his second title, this time with Ten Kate Honda) and Honda protégé Ryuichi Kiyonari (then en route to his second consecutive British Superbike Championship), but they wanted a strong second team as well and a strong, veteran rider to join Tady Okada on the second factory CBR1000RR.
In past days Honda would have drafted their MotoGP riders (Rossi and Colin Edwards won for Honda in 2001, and, in another “dream team” matching, Mick Doohan and Wayne Gardner won for Honda in 1991). But that was back in the day that an eight hour ride was part of a factory Honda GP rider’s contract…no longer the case with the likes of current Repsol Honda MotoGP riders Nicky Hayden and Dani Pedrosa.
Honda Europe’s Carlo Fiorani was asked to find a team mate for Ukawa and as soon as Checa heard about the ride, he requested it.
“I was so tired of riding around with no hope of winning that I jumped at the chance.”
It was love at first lap. Checa, freed of the smallish and electronically neutered RC212V, found the Fire Blade to his liking and was immediately quicker than the more highly-touted Toseland.
The race had a nightmare beginning for Honda when Toseland crashed on the first lap and the number 1 Honda was retired. But even before that, Ukawa, Checa´s team mate, jumped the Le Mans start, beginning his sprint across the track to the bike before the flag fell.
That stop and go penalty dropped the number 33 machine way down the field and the climb back to the front was led by Checa, but, although the Checa-Ukawa bike finished on the same lay (216) as the winners, Yukio Kagayama and Kosuke Akoyishi (factory Suzuki), they were just over 2 minutes back after eight hours.
The Japanese engineers at HRC were impressed with Checa´s speed and the factory executives, scalded by their first defeat after ten years, wanted the Spaniard back.
And Carlos wanted to be back, back on the big CBR1000RR, but not just in endurance trim.
Replacing Toseland with a little help from Honda Europe
A month after Suzuka word came that James Toseland was leaving World Superbike to ride with the Tech3 Yamaha team in MotoGP (part of Dorna’s on-going quest to eventually find a British rider capable of winning in MotoGP…Britain’s last win in the premier class came at Anderstrop, Sweden on the final day of the 1981. the year that Ronald Reagan began his first term). Checa let Honda Europe know he wanted the ride, but there were three other names on the short list: Alex Barros, Andrew Pitt and Neil Hodgson.
Gerrit Ten Kate admits that he preferred Pitt or Hodgson and that he rated Barros over Checa because he had seen Barros on the Klaffi Honda in World Superbike in 2006 and had also seen Barros put the satellite D´Antin Ducati on the podium in MotoGP at the Italian G.P. at Mugello ahead of Casey Stoner.
“But,” said Gerrit, the uncle of this partner Roland Ten Kate, “Barros was asking for too much money. Then Neil said he was staying in the AMA series and we signed Pitt to an open contract, either in Superbike or Supersport. Finally we signed Checa, who was asking for less money and had very strong support from Honda Europe. But I wasn’t so sure we do the right thing until I meet him. We sign him over the phone. Talking to manager. But when I meet him I see in his eyes he was not another old MotoGP rider. He is young of spirit and hungry to win…a Ten Kate rider!”
The rest is history. The new Fire Blades arrived late and, at first, the Dutchman thought that it might be Kiyonari who would get to terms with the bike first since he had been riding in the BSB for the last three seasons and with two titles to his credit. But quickly they saw that Checa was to be the leader. While Kiyonari and Kenan Sofuoglu (the young Turkish rider who won the 2007 World Supersport title) seemed to prefer the HRC race kit swing arm or the first Roberts swing arm that the team received, Checa surprised the team by opting for them stock swing arm at Qatar and giving good feedback to both HRC and Roberts about what needed to be done.
The big crash in Valencia
By the time the series got to Valencia, the KR group had supplied Checa with the Roberts swing arm he needed and he had completely come to terms with the bike. After a poor start in race one, he ran down leader Max Neukirchner. But would have needed one more lap to have closed up enough to make a pass. Cheered on my 40,000 Spanish fans, Carlos tried it anyway…coming from way back on the brakes at the final corner, got in too hot up the inside of the German and both went down.
The German and British press were very hard on him…with Britain’s Motorcycle News considering such headlines as “Careless Chucker Spoils Max’s Maiden Victory” and “Young German’s Maiden Win Spoiled by Spanish Lunatic”. Carlos apologized to Max, who broke a collarbone in the crash and was unable to ride race 2. In the second race Checa again got a bad start but got to the front earlier and then faded back to a distant fourth with an electronics problem. When he finally managed to turn off the traction control there was not enough time left to catch Nori Haga and he finished second.
Three weeks later at Assen he was second and third behind double winner Tory Bayliss of the 1098 Ducati, and was handicapped in both races by bad starts, a problem that Carlos attributed to “too many years with MotoGP launch control.”
Monza, a track Carlos had never seen before, had him struggling to finish eighth in race one. In race two, after some suspension changes, he was up battling for sixth with Muggeridge, Xaus, Corser and Biaggi and when he was rammed by Corser and went up a slip road. Two laps later he crashed out of eighth and left Italy still second, but a huge 78 points back.
A perfect day at Miller
“I am looking forward to the American race,” said Checa after the Monza disappointment, “because no one knows the track. We have a new bike that has never raced there and I have never raced there so, for the first time, we start out equal.”
A crash during the final qualifying session at turn 5 complicated Carlos´ Saturday, but he got out in time on his second bike to set fourth fastest time and then startled his rivals by setting a new absolute motorcycle record on the Miller three-mile peripheral variant. His time of 1´48.193 on a Pirelli qualifier beat the AMA Superbike record, set by Ben Spies en 2006, by nearly a second…but that time was set on a Dunlop race tire.
On Sunday Checa started badly in the first race, but then won with relative ease from Max Neukirchner after Bayliss crashed on lap five when battling Checa, Neukirchner and Haga for the lead. In race two Checa finally got a good start but got pushed out onto the marbles at turn two and found himself back in sixth at the end of lap one.
By lap nine he was in the lead and pulling away to complete a perfect day--Superpole, two wins and both a qualifying and race record.
Checa had little time to celebrate his wins. He was up at 6 on Monday and off on a long-haul flight to Japan to test the endurance racer and to take part, along with Kiyonari, in the 300 Kilometers of Suzuka, the annual warm-up for the Eight Hours. Then he will fly back for Misano…three races in three weekends.
And when it comes time for the Suzuka Eight Hours Carlos will again have three weeks in three weekends with the Japanese marathon sandwiched between Brno (Czech Republic) and Brand Hatch (Great Britain), but he won’t complain because without that one-off ride last year when he was perceived as a burned out MotoGP veteran, Carlos would not be battling for the World Superbike title in 2008.
And how long will Checa be around?
According to Carlos, “Ten Kate have an option for 2009. I have no plans now to quit. Three years ago about this time I was starting to feel tired. Now I feel I have a lot still inside and a lot left to prove in this sport. Actually it is hard to believe that Bayliss is really quitting.” (Bayliss, who insists that he is leaving bikes to race in the Australian V8 Supercars at the end of this season, is 39, four years younger than Checa.)
Checa´s double combined with Bayliss´s goose egg for the weekend pulled Checa much closer, only 28 points back, to Bayliss, setting the stage for another track where none of the top runners except German homeboy Neukirchner, has circuit knowledge. But Checa learns circuits fast…he has to, because at 35 he was signed to win races and the title this year…and the Suzuka Eight Hours too.
“Sure there is some pressure, but that is good, better than riding around on a uncompetitive bike in MotoGP,” says Carlos.
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