2001 Grand Prix 500 - Round 10 - Brno

In just his second comeback ride after a long wrist injury lay-off, Australia's Garry McCoy rode his fastest ever race at Brno in a record-breaking Czech Republic 500cc Grand Prix to finish sixth and score 10 world championship points.

Although the Red Bull Yamaha rider from Camden, near Sydney, felt no pain from the now healed wrist fracture that forced him to miss five mid-season GPs, McCoy's race endurance was fully tested by the heatwave conditions with a 46-degree track temperature.

McCoy's race time was 32 seconds faster than a year ago in this GP but he still finished seven seconds adrift of the flying Italian Valentino Rossi, who cut a massive 30 seconds from the previous race record held by his countryman Max Biaggi.

Over 22 laps McCoy was just over a second a lap faster than 2000 but such is the strength of the competition in 500 GP racing that even this was not enough to secure a podium finish.

McCoy finished just four seconds out of second place, which was claimed by 1999 world champion Alex Criville.

After qualifying fifth fastest on the second row of the grid, McCoy was trapped in a wild scramble for track position in the opening sequence of corners on the high sped 5.4-kilometre Brno circuit.

McCoy was 10th at the end of the lap one, and passed Spaniard Sete Gibernau, Dutchman Jurgen van den Goorbergh and eventual third-placed Italian Loris Capirossi to be in sixth place on lap four.

McCoy dropped to seventh when Capirossi surged forward and was briefly fifth with five laps remaining before conceding a place to Japan's Tohru Ukawa in the final stages.

McCoy's usual tyre endurance advantage in these warm conditions did not materialise yesterday and he suffered from lack of traction from mid-race after using up his tyres in the early scramble through the traffic.

McCoy set the fourth fastest lap of the race, just 0.6 seconds slower than the new lap record of Valentino Rossi, who won his sixth race of the season. Biaggi started from pole position but crashed during the race although he recovered to finish 10th.

Before the race McCoy had declared himself at best 95 per cent race fit and acknowledged his race distance endurance would be a question only answered in the heat of competition.

Garry McCoy: "I was feeling pretty good strength-wise but it was so hot out there, I guess I'm just not used to it because I haven't been racing all the time like the other guys. I didn't feel any pain from my wrist but it's four months, back at Jerez in May, since I did a race when I was fit and it's long time not to be riding on a regular basis. My start was off the pace and I got shoved around in turn one, it just seemed like everyone was trying to get through at once and there wasn't much room, it wasn't much fun trying not to crash. Then I thought this can't go on so I passed a couple of guys under brakes and ran into (Brazilian) Alex Barros in one corner. I looked around to make sure he hadn't crashed but I couldn't stop to apologise. I probably used my rear tyre up passing guys early in the race and the grip just dropped off quicker than I thought it would and I ran out of drive coming off the turns. After the qualifying runs we did I was feeling pretty confident about the race and thought a top four result could have been possible but the bike got pretty loose and I just didn't have the drive out off the corners. I'm a bit disappointed, but Criville and Capirossi weren't that far ahead of me so I guess in the circumstances it wasn't too bad, much better than throwing it down the road, that's for sure. I had a couple of big slides that threw me out of the seat and I thought OK, just don't crash."

McCoy's race engineer Hamish Jamieson - "Rossi and Biaggi were impressively fast today and that's not a big surprise. But after what we did with Garry in qualifying I'm a bit disappointed we were off the pace, maybe 0.5 seconds a lap, in the race. Garry just ran out of rear-end grip. Although I think we chose the right tyre for the conditions, it seems heat affected our performance more than it usually does."