This race was most notable for the shock win of WCM rider Garry McCoy. Initially, many thought that it would be 1999 500cc world champion Àlex Crivillé who would win the race, mainly thanks to the pole he had obtained on Saturday. This race also marked the first ever 500cc race of Valentino Rossi.
At the start of the race, Kenny Roberts Jr. on his Suzuki, overtook Gibernau at the start to lead the opening lap, followed by the Yamaha of Carlos Checa. Crivillé would drop down to 7th, whilst Tadayuki Okada moved up to third, closely followed by Loris Capirossi who would swap places with each other a few times on the opening lap. McCoy at that time was only in 8th place, and Rossi in 13th after a bad opening lap.
After a few laps, Checa would overtake Kenny Roberts Jr. for the lead, and not long after that Capirossi would follow suit. McCoy dropped to 9th place, with Valentino Rossi behind him.[2]
On the 5th lap, Capirossi overtook Checa to lead the race, and after 12 laps, both Max Biaggi and Valentino Rossi were out of the race; Biaggi because of technical problems, and Rossi because of a crash.[3]
With the laps closing down, McCoy overtook multiple people to reach third place. Sete Gibernau also overtook Kenny Roberts to go on and finish in what would be 4th place, but ran wide and eventually retired. Not much later, Crivillé would end up overtaking Roberts Jr. as well.
With 5 laps to go, McCoy overtook the Honda of Capirossi and went up into second place. A few corners later, he overtook the other Yamaha of Checa to lead the race. He held off a late charge from Checa and would come home to win the race with 0.366 seconds difference: the first 500cc race of his career.[4][5]
