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Italian sensation Valentino Rossi set the
pace at Catalunya in a very tight final qualifying session at Catalunya.
"I made a mistake at Mugello, so I came here aiming to move on from there, but then I crashed again yesterday," said Rossi, who fell without injury in Friday's opening qualifying session, but nevertheless finished third fastest. "That crash badly damaged my number-one bike, so I was sorry for the team, and it also lost us set-up time. So we really concentrated on race set-up today, then I found a clear lap when I'd fitted my soft rear tyre and got pole position. Pole is always good but especially so this weekend because there are so many guests and great riders of the past here for Honda's 500 GP wins celebration. I want to give them a win tomorrow but the times are very close, I expect a tough race." Rossi isn't wrong. The lap times at Catalunya are frantically close with the front row covered by less than two tenths of a second and the quickest ten men separated by just one second. Impressive 500 rookie Shinya Nakano (Yamaha) was second, just 0.011 seconds off Rossi, with Loris Capirossi (West Honda Pons NSR500) third and Max Biaggi (Yamaha) fourth. Capirossi had been on provisional pole on Friday and had planned an end-of-session charge to put him back ahead of Rossi, giving his locally based team an important home-race pole position. But his soft rear tyre wasn't fitted in time and he ended up third. "I'm upset," said the Italian. "At the beginning of the session we had some problems with the front end, we tried several solutions but none really worked. Then we lost five minutes while fitting the soft rear at the end of the session. Okay, so I've lost pole position but the important thing is to start the race from the front row. We have a good race setting and I'll be trying my very best to give the team a win at their home track." Max Biaggi - "We’ve made a real move forward, and it’s very satisfying to go from the fourth to the front row," said Biaggi, highest scorer at the last two GPs and currently second on points. "We worked hard but didn’t make any major changes, it was more a case of a little things working well together. We also found a good front tyre that gives me more confidence. We’re up front but we lost a day against the others yesterday, so the race will be hard. I had a surprise today – Jacques Villeneuve appeared in my pit after the session. I’ve been telling him for ages to come to a bike GP, so it’s good to see him here. Tomorrow is a big day for me, even after the race. Roma are playing Parma and if they win, they win the Italian title The game starts at three, so I need to find someone with the right satellite dish" Alex Barros (West Honda Pons NSR500) had been second yesterday but slipped to fifth this afternoon, to lead the second row, albeit only 0.079 seconds off Biaggi. "We spent a lot of time this morning working on our front-fork settings, and finally I think that is okay," said Barros, who, like Capirossi, benefits from new Honda engine parts this weekend. "Now the bike has more top speed, though I think acceleration is about the same. I can race for the win tomorrow and I think Capirossi, Rossi, Biaggi and Nakano will be my main rivals." Proton Team KR rider Jurgen van den Goorbergh will start tomorrow's Catalunyan GP from sixth position, the Dutch rider's second successive second row start in his first season on the three-cylinder lightweight machine. Earlier in the final session Jurgen - a former pole qualifier here - was up to second position. That gave the other riders a target, however, and by the end he had dropped to sixth. Even so, with former clutch problems now solved and a good getaway on the cards, the team is expecting their best race so far this year. The good qualifying results at Mugello two weeks ago (seventh) and here at Catalunya follow successful test sessions before and after the Italian round, when the team solved niggling problems that had caused trouble at earlier rounds. Jurgen Van Den Goorbergh - "I've had no big problems all weekend. In the final session there was a little gearbox difficulty, that was the result of the heat. The power was still strong though, but tomorrow I'll have to be careful about slipstreaming if it is warm again, because that makes the temperature climb, and eventually you lose power. The bike was already good yesterday, and today it improved again. We've found a good race tyre, though front tyres are a problem here, and I'd expect to see people having trouble and even falling with front-end slides at the end of the race. I did my fast time alone - without a slipstream we lose three or four tenths, so if I'd been following somebody I might have been on the front row. As it was, I did the time too early in the session. That gave the other riders a target to shoot for. If I'd waited until the end, I might have slipped the time in without anybody having the chance to fight back." Tohru Ukawa (Repsol YPF Honda NSR500) came back from a tumble yesterday to record ninth-fastest time for a third-row start for his first 500 race at this track. Local hero Alex Crivillé (Repsol YPF Honda NSR500) could only manage 11th. "We've had some really bad chatter problems, so I'm not too happy," explained Crivillé. "We changed everything, even geometry, but we keep going backwards." Confident of a strong final qualifying session after being on the provisional second row yesterday, Carlos Checa was unable to find the set-up he required for this afternoon’s final qualifier. The local Marlboro Yamaha Team man couldn’t better his Friday times, and as others got faster, he slipped to 12th. "I’m still getting a lot of chatter, so I’m not comfortable on the bike," he said. "When I’m going through a corner at maximum angle, the rear starts chattering as soon as I get on the throttle, so I’m having to wait before I accelerate, then stand up the bike as I get on the throttle and that’s losing me time. I don’t understand why it’s so bad. We’ll try something else in the warm-up and pray for a better race." Garry McCoy returned to action here a month after breaking a wrist at the French GP, but despite qualifying 14th, he’s withdrawn from tomorrow’s race. "I don’t think I can do race distance, so there’s no point," he said. "It’s the muscle strain that’s hurting me and racing could make that worse." Teenage Australian motorcycle racer Ant West qualified 19th for tomorrow's 500cc Catalunya Grand Prix in Spain. The 19-year-old 500cc rookie clocked a quickest qualifying lap of 1-minute 48.958-secs around the 4.7km Barcelona circuit on his Dee Cee Racing Honda V-Twin in dry conditions. He set the time on his 21st of 24 laps in the session, and it was 1.016-secs faster than his best lap of 1-minute 49.974-secs in yesterday's opening qualifying session. Anthony West - "Yesterday I had a lot of trouble with chatter from the front, going into the corners. Overnight we changed the forks and revised some of the valves for the damping, and it's been a lot better today. In fact I was a bit quicker this morning in free practice than in qualifying. In the afternoon there was a fair bit of wind coming head-on down the straight, which hurt my top speed. My arm is a lot better now. It's not painful and not causing me any trouble. We tested at Assen after the last GP (at Mugello) and I needed it to be strapped then. Now I don't need anything at all. I have a new mechanic which has improved things in the pit for me. He is Graeme Beere, who was my mechanic when I was doing dirt-track in Australia, and worked with me on the 250 in '99. The test at Assen was good because it gave me time on the bike with the new frame. It's more rigid than what we'd used before, and it's got an adjustable steering head. I tried lifting the bike a little higher, and overall it's better-balanced now. We also fixed the carburation problem we had a Mugello."
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