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Home News International News World Sidecar Championship - 2002 Season in review
World Sidecar Championship - 2002 Season in review PDF Print E-mail
Friday, 22 April 2005 10:00
I found this background on the MCNews site. You can go there from this link or simply click "read more" below.

2002 began with a warning for the sidecar teams – look out for Steve Abbott and Jamie Biggs. The sidecar veterans returned to preseason testing in Spain with their best preparation and backing in many seasons and looked like a serious challenge for the likes of Webster and Klaffenböck.
The Derbyshireman Abbott, world championship veteran for more than 20 years took the first race at Valencia, but only after Webster’s hugely powerful 1200cc Suzuki engine failed, cracking the cases when leading by a considerable margin.

Austrians, Klaffenböck and Parzer were world champions in 2001, but chose to defend this title by moving to a smaller, lighter and less powerful Yamaha R1 powerplant. This controversial move, in line with rumoured rule changes proposed for 2003, seemed like an excuse to hand the title back to 8 times championship winner Webster until the Monza round.

Monza saw a titanic race long battle between highly reckoned Webster and Woodhead, Swiss pairing of Schlosser and his veteran passenger Adolf Hänni and the underdog world champs Klaffenböck and Parzer. At over 280 km/h, the three teams juggled positions until Schlosser’s engine blew in spectacular fashion. That left Klaffi and Webbo in a last lap dice that lead to one of the most memorable wins for the season. Klaffi outbraked Webbo into the Parabolica and won the drag to the line, winning by only 0.142 seconds – the first win for the R1 based Yamaha in world sidecar.

Abbott regained the championship lead at Silverstone, after an incident packed race saw rivals Webster and Woodhead, Klaffeböck and Parzer fail to finish, while Steinhausen and Hopkinson slipped to third with engine troubles. Fellow brits, Hanks and Biggs consistency was rewarded with a memorable second place.

The tension increased at the east German round at Lausitzring, with another incident packed race. Webster continued his run of dnfs with another GSXR1200 ending up in the bin, but Klaffenböck and Parzer finished worse of when they slid on fluid, allegedly spilt by Webster. Christian Parzer lost his grip and somersaulted from the circuit, braking his ankle in the process.

The resulting melee left Abbott and Biggs in command until the last series of esses, when electrical failure cut the motor, leaving them with a heart wrenching push to the line for eleventh place and five valuable championship points.

Another engine failure for Webster at Misano prompted the unusual mid-season decision to change engines from the Suzuki GSXR1100 tuned to 1200cc to the more modern Suzuki GSXR1000 with fuel injection. Brands Hatch was the first time out for the new configuration and also the first win. In fact, in a sign of things to come, the podium consisted of teams running 1000cc engines for the first time.

Webster won again at Oschersleben, but not before wildcard Scots Skene and Miller battled for the lead. It was another incident packed race where the Karttiala team from Finland stopped the race after a fireball engulfed their crashed machine.

The final round at Imola could hardly have had a better lead up. Five teams went to the grid with a chance at winning the title. Hanks and Biggs hadn’t won a race, but scoring solid points in every race so far saw them in with a chance.

The race had everything, with high speed overtaking, fairing bashing, and huge smoking powerslides adding to the drama of calculating the point for the top five. Klaffi and Webbo went head to head swapping paint before the race was red flagged due to an unfortunate incident back in the pack.

The final result was almost too close to call, with Abbott and Steinhausen tied on points. But with Abbott’s three wins to Steini’s one saw the crowning of a very popular world champion.
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