Proton Team KR riders Nobuatsu Aoki and Jeremy McWilliams faced bitter disappointment at today’s South African GP, with neither finishing a race where they had high hopes of taking full benefit of their lightweight three-cylinder Proton KR3 machines’ strong points.

McWilliams was moving up through the field in the early stages of the race when he suffered a gearshift failure after five of the 28 laps of the tortuous 4.242km circuit outside the gold mining town of Welkom.

Aoki, close behind, took up the cudgels and was also running strongly when he crashed out on the eighth lap. The team suspected an oil leak had caused the crash.

It was particularly disappointing after a strong performance in practice had shown that the KR3’s advantages of nimble handling and high corner speed gave the two riders a chance to get back at the more powerful but heavier and clumsier four-cylinder machines, both two-strokes and the new 990cc four-strokes. Now they must wait another fortnight for the Spanish GP at Jerez, another twisting circuit with few chances for the big bikes to use full throttle.

Today’s South African GP was the second of 16 rounds in the new MotoGP championship, that pits new 990cc four-stroke prototypes against 500cc two-strokes like the Proton KR3.

NOBUATSU AOKI - "I landed very heavily on my ankle, which is very painful. It was a very strange crash, in an unusual place. I think there might have been an oil leak onto my rear tyre. I was already in the corner, but I hadn’t opened the throttle yet when the bike suddenly went sideways and flipped me over the high side. It was a pity, because the bike and the race were going well, and the Bridgestone tyres working well in the heat."

JEREMY McWILLIAMS - "What can I say. I had easily overtaken Max Biaggi’s four-stroke Yamaha, and I was staying with Nakano’s two-stroke fairly easily. I was just studying where he and his group were faster than me, and where I was faster than them, planning to start moving through the group. I was definitely able to go quicker through the bumpy sections. Then suddenly I had no gear change. I had to stop."

CHUCK AKSLAND – Team Manager - "That was a bad end to what had been a really good weekend. We’d made a lot of progress with the bike and learned several things. Unfortunately our luck didn’t last until the end of the race! It’s hard on everyone when we have a good weekend, but then the race gives you zero. Jeremy’s bike had a problem with the gear-shift drum, and Nobu might have had an oil leak. We need to look at what failed us, and fix it. We’re always pushing our machinery to the limit, and our strength in the past has been an ability to respond quickly to problems and change things. We’ll do that again, and look forward to the next race."