A SPLIT crankcase prevented runaway race leader Steve Webster from opening the FIM World Sidecar Championship season with a victory in Valencia, Spain yesterday.

A weekend of mechanical woes had seemingly been overturned when, with just three laps to go and a huge lead, Easingwold's speed king was forced to slow.

He eventually limped home in 11th place, the angry roar of his 1200cc Suzuki reduced to a painful sounding grumble.

The race win was gifted to Steve Abbott, with Jorg Steinhausen second, and world champion Klaus Klaffenbock in third.

"We had it in the bag - three laps to go and then it started misfiring and losing power, I couldn't believe it," said a fed-up Webster.

"When we stripped it down afterwards we found that the crankcases had cracked behind the electronic ignition pick up, so that came lose and the power just went off.

"We managed to keep it going and finish in the points - those few points might be crucial come the end of the season."

It had been a topsy-turvy weekend for former world champion Webster and passenger Paul Woodhead. Clearly fastest on the track, they had had a torrid weekend marred by misfortune.

It started when Webster was late in arriving at the circuit on Thursday night and missed a compulsory riders' briefing. As a result he was barred from taking part in the first free practice session on Friday.

Problems with the cooling systems in the first timed session left him down in seventh fastest, and then in the Saturday sessions more engine gremlins further restricted their track time.

Nevertheless in the Superpole session, Webster made it clear who was the top dog by blitzing round an amazing 3.5 seconds faster than anyone else to grab pole position.

After only getting a handful of laps in over the four practice periods combined it was a welcome boost as well as a stern warning to the rest of the field.

Come race day, Webster was into the lead by lap two, had pulled five seconds clear by the halfway point and underlined that he was a class apart. With three laps to go he was a handsome 13 seconds clear and cruising when the problem struck.

"At least we think we know what has caused it and what we need to do when we get the bike home, but it's very disappointing after the race had gone so well," said Webster.

"We've had two engines go like that this weekend, so it's either pure bad luck or something we'll have to work on. It's maybe a problem caused by using the engines we do - they come from road bikes and we don't really know what their history is.

"We spend a lot of time and money building the engines with new parts inside, but the crankcases are the one thing we can't do too much about. If they look okay, you have to assume they are.

"We've never had this problem before this weekend and to have two go gives me some clue as to what it is."

With the next round, at Kyalami, in South Africa on April 7, Webster has enough time to get to the cause of the problem. He has proved he is the fastest on the track but that speed needs engine reliability to translate into points and ultimately world titles.

A new lap record confirmed his mastery, but will be small compensation on the long journey home.

In the Superbikes, Troy Bayliss got his title defence off to the best possible start with a brace of wins.

Updated: 12:01 Monday, March 11, 2002