Río GP. Races

Valentino Rossi and Repsol, 2002 MotoGP World Champions
The Repsol rider was crowned as king of the premier category for the second year in row. Nieto and Pedrosa see their titles farther away after crashing out.
 Different luck for the Repsol riders in Brazil. For Valentino Rossi this has been one of the happiest days of his life, becoming the first World Champion of the MotoGP class. After winning the last World Championship of the 500cc in 2001, the young Repsol rider clinched the title again this year, in the best way he knows: winning. It wasn’t an easy race for any of the participating riders. The rain was present during the whole of the 24-lap race at the Brazilian circuit. After quite a troubled start, with Carlos Checa unable to move at the starting grid, there was a small scrum at the end of the straight with Daijiro Kato, Nobuatsu Aoki, José Luis Cardoso and Sete Gibernau. Kenny Roberts took the lead of the race, with Valentino Rossi lapping comfortably in second position. In the second lap, Tohru Ukawa, Rossi’s team-mate and the only rider who had mathematical chances to get the title, crashed after loosing grip on the front tyre of his Repsol Honda RC211V while braking in a corner. From that moment on Valentino Rossi only needed to get eleven points to become World Champion, but his nonconformist nature took him to fight for the victory. At mid-race Checa arrived after an excellent recovery and Valentino, warned by his team, overtook Roberts and pushed harder in order to avoid any surprises. But Checa was especially fast today at the Brazilian circuit and only a crash after overtaking Rossi hindered him from battling for his first victory in MotoGP. Alone in the lead, Rossi kept straight until the chequered flag, thus celebrating his second world title in the premier category with still four races to go. In the 250cc luck wasn’t on Fonsi Nieto’s side this time. After a late start, he crashed while making up positions and being already fifth, almost catching up with Melandri. On this occasion, the Repsol rider was not able to rejoin the race, thus loosing any option to shorten differences in the overall classification. Melandri, who finished fourth after the race won by the Argentinean Sebastián Porto, has now a comfortable advantage of 45 points in the standings over Fonsi Nieto, who keeps himself in second. Toni Elias, fifth, made a good race in the rain, thus getting over his troubled performance in Portugal. In the 125cc the victory was for the Japanese rider Azuma. Dani Pedrosa could not finish the race, because the engine of his Honda gave up in the third lap, and has lost many options in the fight for the title against Vincent and Poggiali, who performed today an exciting duel, finishing in precisely this order behind the winner. Joan Olivé, very cautious at the beginning of the race, crossed the finish line in twenty-second place after starting from a backward position.