Lights, controversy, action launch motorbike season

Larry Tate

SPECIAL TO THE STAR

The start of international and North American championship racing got underway last weekend, peppered by some red-faced officiating and a full card of GP racing under the lights.

Results first, then the fun stuff. In MotoGP, Casey Stoner and Marlboro Ducati opened their title defence with a solid victory at the Losail Circuit in Qatar. It was unique, in that the race was run under lights at 11 p.m. local time, reportedly 5.4 million watts' worth of them.

Stoner was followed home by Majorca resident Jorge Lorenzo on a factory Fiat Yamaha (his first-ever MotoGP race), while third went to Spaniard Dani Pedrosa on one of the factory Repsol Hondas.

In North America, the Saturday saw the running of the 67th edition of the Daytona 200, which was won by Josh Hayes. Or wait, it was Chaz Davies. Um, maybe it was Hayes after all (more on this in a minute).

Same weekend, same venue, same old-same old – the superbike race was steamrollered by Yoshimura Suzuki, with six-time champion Mat Mladin leading his young teammate (and twice champion) Ben Spies across the line. The third Yosh bike, piloted by Tommy Hayden, finished fourth, with a Yamaha R1 sandwiched in third under diminutive Jason DiSalvo.

The other two big road races at Daytona went to Aaron Yates in Superstock on one of Michael Jordan's Suzukis (yes, that Michael Jordan), while superbike ace Ben Bostrom squeaked out a 100th-of-a-second victory for Graves Yamaha over teenage teammate Josh Herrin, their two R6 machines comfortably ahead of the pack.

Best Canadian results at Daytona came courtesy of Chris Peris of Calgary. Peris has a new team, sponsor and ride this season, and is looking for the breakthrough he's really been owed for a couple of seasons now. With a fifth in Superstock on his ESP Suzuki, backed up by a decent 13th in the superbike event, he did well.

Canadian star content at Daytona is usually in the hands of Miguel Duhamel, but the feisty native of La Belle Province had a weekend that no doubt made him wish he was home in Las Vegas golfing.

In the feature 200-miler – a race he's won five times – his clutch gave up on the first lap after he made a demon start, and he pitted. Then an erroneous instruction from the race officials led the team to believe he could restart on a backup bike, which he did.

Duhamel worked his way up from 57th to fourth in the field before red-faced AMA officials informed the team that they'd been in error, the bike was illegal, and the Quebec native would have to be called in.

Then in the superbike race, directly after, he had some handling issues, crashed, but managed to restart to finish 12th and at least get a few points for his trouble.

Now, back to the controversy over the feature 200-mile event. Josh Hayes on one of the Erion Hondas won comfortably, riding fast and aggressively through traffic. He got great pit stops and didn't put a wheel wrong the whole day.

Early on, he was part of a searing fast group that included his teammate Jake Zemke, Duhamel's American Honda teammate Neil Hodgson (twice World Superbike champ), Daytona veteran Michael Barnes on an M4 Emgo Suzuki, and the Attack Kawasaki squad of Chaz Davies and Steve Rapp. Rapp was the defending winner from 2007; Davies is serving his first full season in North America.

Eventually, Zemke's machine delayed him interminably in a pit stop, Hodgson's engine blew up, Barnes had a nasty accident and was transported to hospital, and Hayes just kept edging away from the Attack squad for the win.

Then, several hours after the celebrations, the AMA sanctioning body announced that Hayes's bike had been deemed illegal in post-race scrutinizing, and Davies was being awarded the victory. The Erion team and Honda have, of course, lodged official protests.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the world in the Persian Gulf emirate of Qatar, the world series of MotoGP, 250GP and 125GP were lining up to battle in the first-ever night races in the history of world championship racing.

There were concerns over temperatures affecting tires (it's a desert, it gets chilly at night, even near the equator), sand (it gets windy at night, and Qatar is smack in the middle of a fine sand desert), and visibility (would the lights really be good enough to race by?).

The racing was excellent. MotoGP features several so-called "rookies" this season (although they're all experienced racers with championships under their belts from other series) and one of them, Jorge Lorenzo, took the pole and ended up a fighting second in the race.

Another, James Toseland, was second on the grid, fought for a podium position the entire race, and just missed catching seven-time world champion Valentino Rossi for fifth at the end (Rossi on a factory Yamaha, Toseland on a "customer" Yamaha, at that). Andrea Dovizioso, another rookie, caught Rossi on the last lap – excellent scrapping right down the field.

Nicky Hayden, 2006 world champ, had a miserable evening, mired in 10th at the end with what he said was a set-up mistake that ruined his rear tire early.

Colin Edwards (in almost certainly his last year in MotoGP) had felt confident of a podium, but ended up seventh.

"I didn't leave anything out there tonight," he said, shaking his head over the pace. "If you paid me a million dollars, I couldn't have gone any faster. I was riding my hardest, but at the end of the day, it just wasn't fast enough."

Probably the best race of the new season was the 250GP race from Qatar, run just before the MotoGP.

A superb contest saw Italian 250 cc rookie Mattia Pasini take his Aprilia to the win in his first 250GP with a breath-taking double pass on the second-last lap, while Spaniard Hector Barbera rode much more calmly than usual (Barbera could get a job in a circus, he's usually so entertaining to watch) to take second on another Aprilia and Finn Mika Kallio got third on the factory KTM, as usual coming on very strong in the last third of the race.

Great stuff; classic racing at its best.

Larry Tate writes about motorcycle racing for Wheels. He can be reached at larryt@primus.ca

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