FAB FOUR!
The destination of the 2000 World Superbike Riders’ crown was conceivably altered by Yamaha rider Noriyuki Haga’s ultimate three-week ban after a failed drugs test at that season’s first round in South Africa.
During the off-season Nori-chan had apparently embarked on an extensive fitness regime, which resulted in his turning up at Kyalami some 15kg lighter than before. He’d used a commercially available Japanese dietary supplement named Ma Huang to help trim his weight, which contained a higher natural concentration level of ephedrine than permitted under FIM rules (12mcg vs 10mcg allowed). Despite the best efforts of Yamaha to overturn the decision, his Race 2 victory at Kyalami was forfeited, and he was forced to miss the final October 15 Brands Hatch round entirely, thus sacrificing a theoretical 75 points, yet finishing runner-up in the points table just 65 points behind Honda’s Colin Edwards.
This meant that the bike which is arguably the most desirable Japanese four-cylinder motorcycle, did not win the world championship it was created to obtain.
During 1999 Yamaha got serious about Superbike racing by introducing the YZF-R7 OW-02 in fuel-injected, limited-edition guise alongside the R6. This meant that the full range of no-compromise sportsbikes which had begun with the radical one-litre R1 hyper-sports model 12 months earlier, had now arrived in the marketplace.
But with the total planned R7 production of just 500 bikes, Yamaha's intentions for the R7 were clear. They had followed the Ducati and Aprilia mantra by producing a costly (£20,000 in Britain) no-compromises homologation special for Superbike racing.
Yet when World Superbike 2001 kicked off at Valencia in March, Haga and his R7 OW-02 were missing in action, because Yamaha had marked its displeasure at losing the previous year’s world title by cutting short its factory involvement in WSBK one year early. Nori would go 500cc Grand Prix racing instead.
The WSB battle of 2000
