Alanf's blog...

Last year I built a combined road race calendar for 2005 (with race dates for AMA Superbike, AMA Supermoto, World Superbike and MotoGP, as well as local races like the MRA, the local round of the AMA Supermoto series, the local round of the AHRMA series and the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb). I found it really useful so I decided to do it again for 2006. Here is the current road race calendar for this year:

February:

25 - WSBK @ Losail International Circuit; Doha, Qatar

March:

5 - WSBK @ Phillip Island Grand Prix Circuit; Phillip Island, Australia

11 - AMA SBK @ Daytona International Speedway; Daytona Beach, FL

26 - MotoGP @ Circuit de Jerez de la Frontera; Jerez, Spain

April:

8 - MotoGP @ Losail International Circuit; Doha, Qatar

23 - WSBK @ Circuit de la Comunitat Valenciana Ricardo Tormo; Valencia, Spain

23 - AMA SBK @ Barber Motorsports Park; Birmingham, AL

29 - AMA Supermoto @ California Speedway; Fontana, CA

30 - MotoGP @ Istanbul Park; Istanbul, Turkey

30 - AMA SBK @ California Speedway; Fontana, CA

30 - MRA @ Pueblo Motorsports Park; Pueblo, CO

May:

7 - WSBK @ Autodromo Nazionale Monza; Monza, Italy

14 - MotoGP @ Shanghai Circuit; Shanghai, China

21 - MotoGP @ Bugatti Le Mans Circuit; Le Mans, France

21 - AMA SBK @ Infineon Raceway; Sonoma, CA

28 - WSBK @ Silverstone; Silverstone, UK

June:

3 - AMA Supermoto @ Road America; Elkhart Lake, WI

4 - MotoGP @ Circuito del Mugello; Mugello, Italy

4 - AMA SBK @ Road America; Elkhart Lake, WI

4 - MRA @ La Junta Raceway; La Junta, CO

10 - AMA Supermoto @ USA International Raceway; Shawano, WI

17 - AMA Supermoto @ Miller Motorsports Park; Salt Lake City, UT

18 - MotoGP @ Circuit de Catalunya; Catalunya, Spain

18 - AMA SBK @ Miller Motorsports Park; Salt Lake City, UT

24 - MotoGP @ TT Circuit Assen; Assen, Netherlands

25 - WSBK @ Circuito Internazionale Santa Monica; Misano, San Marino

25 - PPIHC @ Pikes Peak Hill Climb; Colorado Springs, CO

July:

2 - MotoGP @ Donnington Park; Donnington Park, Great Britain

8 - AMA Supermoto @ The Palace of Auburn Hills; Detroit, MI

9 - MRA @ Miller Motorsports Park; Salt Lake City, UT

16 - MotoGP @ Sachsenring Circuit; Sachsenring, Germany

23 - MotoGP @ Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca; Monterrey, CA

23 - WSBK @ Brno; Brno, Czech Republic

23 - AMA SBK @ Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca; Monterey, CA

30 - MRA @ Motorsport Park Hastings; Hastings, NE

August:

6 - WSBK @ Brands Hatch; Brands Hatch, UK

6 - AMA SBK @ Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course; Lexington, OH

13 - MRA @ Pueblo Motorsports Park; Pueblo, CO

20 - MotoGP @ Automotodrom Brno; Brno, Czech Republic

20 - AMA SBK @ Virginia International Raceway; Alton, VA

27 - MRA @ La Junta Raceway; La Junta, CO

27 - AMA Supermoto @ TBA; TBA, CO

September:

3 - WSBK @ TT Circuit Assen; Assen, Netherlands

3 - AMA SBK @ Road Atlanta; Braselton, GA.

10 - MotoGP @ Sepang International Circuit; Sepang, Malaysia

10 - WSBK @ Eurospeedway Lausitz; Lausitzring, Germany

10 - MRA @ Motorsport Park Hastings; Hastings, NE

17 - MotoGP @ Phillip Island Grand Prix Circuit; Phillip Island, Australia

17 - AHRMA @ Miller Motorsports Park; Salt Lake City, Utah

24 - MotoGP @ Twin Ring Motegi; Motegi, Japan

24 - MRA @ Pueblo Motorsports Park; Pueblo, CO

October:

1 - WSBK @ Autodromo Enzo e Dino Ferrari Imola; Imola, Italy

1 - AMA SBK @ Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course; Lexington, OH

8 - WSBK @ Circuit de Nevers Magny-Cours; Magny-Cours, France

14 - AMA Supermoto @ Music City Motorplex; Nashville, TN

15 - MotoGP @ Circuito do Estoril; Estoril, Portugal

22 - WSBK @ TBA; TBA, South Africa

29 - MotoGP @ Circuit de la Comunitat Valenciana Ricardo Tormo; Valencia, Spain

November:

4 - AMA Supermoto @ Queen Mary; Long Beach, CA

Well, it looks like I’ll be making a few trips to Utah in ‘06 since both the AMA has moved from the now deceased Pikes Peak International Raceway to the new Miller Motorsports Park near Salt Lake City. They have even thrown in a Supermoto event to make the event even more enticing despite the long drive. Then AHRMA moved their Fall event from the Pueblo Motorsports Park to Miller Motorsports Park as well. I already have my tickets for the combined MotoGP/AMA races at Laguna Seca in July so I will definitely be out there this summer. Finally, I’d like to catch some MRA races, since I try to support the local racers, but that will be pretty challenging this year since all of the races are so far away from the Denver metro area. Naturally, I will continue to watch everything on TV and do my best to provide some coverage here on the blog for all the races and in my WSBKPod podcast for the World Superbike races. Make sure to mark these dates on your calendar and watch some racing this year, preferably in person but if not then at least on the tube.

[image from the MotoGrandPrix.it web site.]

“The jungle is dark but full of diamonds…”
– Arthur Miller, _Death of a Salesman_

I am back from my dual sporting adventure in Costa Rica. (I first mentioned it back in January). I went down with four of my riding buddies and I believe I can speak for all of us in saying that we had a blast. We rented KTM 640 LC4s from Costa Rica Motorcycle Tours and Rentals and I highly recommend them to anyone interested in riding in Costa Rica. We had some bike problems during the trip (some caused by us, some caused by the KTM factory) and Wilhelm did an excellant job of dealing with these so they didn’t adversely affect our trip. I also think that the big KTM was the perfect bike for Costa Rica. Enough power to run 100 kmh on the main roads but still small enough to wrestle over single track goat trails.

I will be doing a two stage write-up on this. First, I have already created a basic web page with some of my favorite photos. Then, over the next couple of weeks, I’ll write up a full trip report and link it into the bottom of the photos page.

[image from the University of Texas Libraries web site.]

I’ve listed all the details in previous blog postings but I wanted to post a quick reminder that I will be out of the country for the next week on my Costa Rican adventure. There won’t be any new blog (or podcast) postings until I return the week of February 13th.

[image from the MotoAdventures Costa Rica web site.]

With the first World Superbike race of the ‘06 season scheduled for February 25, which is just a few weeks away, I better get my review of the 2005 season published. Last December I did a blog posting about the ‘05 WSBK line-up where I said that the the new found diversity on the grid was sure to generate excitement in a series that had previously become dominated by Ducati. Well, that certainly turned out to be an understatement as the four cylinder bikes completely reshaped the World Superbike series last year.

The excitement for the season actually started early in the pre-season. The Alstare Suzuki team of Troy Corser and Yukio Yagayama showed up at the first test at Phillip Island and immediately started turning laps considerably faster than any of the other riders. At the end of the weekend, Corser topped the timing sheets with a considerable advantage over everyone else. What made this interesting was the fact that Alstare didn’t have their 2005 bikes in time for the initial test. Instead, they pulled an old 2003 GSXR 750, previously raced by Gregorio Lavilla, out of storage and then put the new 1000cc motor in it. The fact that Troy could still put in the fastest laps on a two year old bike was a pretty clear sign that the four cylinder bikes in general, and Corser in particular, where back in World Superbike.

The second official test went much the same way. The Alstare guys showed up with their new 2005 bikes and then proceeded to dominate with both again topping the charts. In fact, the two Suzukis ended the test almost half a second faster than the other riders. Also impressive at the second test were the Yamahas with five of the top ten positions being posted by R1s. The big surprise was that the Ten Kate Honda team, who had fought for the title in ‘04, were turning in some of the slowest laps at the tests. Clearly there was a problem in the Honda camp.

Corser had looked threatening during testing but it was at the first race at Qatar where that message was really driven home. Race one was all about Corser with Kagayama running a strong second. Regis Laconi, who had shown solid speed at the second WSBK test, rounded out the podium. Race two started out the same but Corser’s pushed too hard, too early and wore out his front tire. From there it was all Kagayama as the Japanese rider stormed away to his maiden WSBK victory. Laconi, followed up his race one podium with another by getting second in race two.

When the teams returned to Phillip Island for the second race of the season, it was all Corser. The Aussie doubled by winning both races while his teammate continued his string of strong finishes by following his teammate across the line in both races. The excitement of the weekend became watching the battle for the final podium spot. In race one, it was Chris Vermeulen who showed a thankful return to his 2004 form while in race two it was World Superbike rookie Max Neukirchner who thrilled everyone on the way to his maiden podium.

The European leg of the series started at Valencia, Spain but still looked the same as Phillip Island with Corser again dominating and bringing home the double. Vermeulen made another step forward to bring home two second place finishes while the final step was again split. Kagayama continued his string of podium appearances in race one while a rapidly improving Walker took the spot in the final race of the weekend.

From Spain, the WSBK circuit moved to Monza Italy and the home of Ducati. As a result, the Xerox Ducati riders seemed to find a little extra. Still, it wasn’t enough to stop Corser who one race one, his fifth straight win, again followed home by his teammate. However, it was James Toseland on his Ducati who rounded out the rostrum in race one. Race two was a complete reshuffle with Vermeulen taking his first win of the season. Laconi represented the nearby Bologna based Ducati factory on the podium with a second and Corser was third.

Race five was held at the Silverstone circuit in the UK and for the first time all year a Suzuki didn’t win either race. It was Laconi, building on the momentum from his Monza podium, who won the first race ahead of Corser and Toseland. Race two switched up with Toseland winning over Corser. The final spot in the second race was taken by Noriyuki Haga. Despite the fast times turned in my Yamaha in the pre-season, the R1 riders struggled in the first races of the season but Silverstone seemed to mark the end of their troubles and the start of Haga’s return to competitiveness.

The series then returned to the boot with a mid-summer race at the Misano circuit in San Marino. I guess the Italian air really suits the Ducatis because Regis Laconi turned in a stunning double, winning both races. Vermeulen topped Corser in both races and gained enough points to jump into second in the championship chase.

Next up was the race at Brno in the Czech Republic. After not winning in the past five races, Corser turned in a crushing performance in the first race, running away to a commanding victory. The two Ducatis of Toseland and Laconi continued their strong runs by rounding out the podium. However, Haga made a strong statement in race two by starting slow but then charging forward to lead, and eventually win, the race over Corser. Vermeulen rounded out the rostrom.

A repeat visit to England was on tap for the eighth race of the season, this time to the Brands Hatch circuit. Corser was quick to retaliate, after losing a race at Brno, and did so by winning the first race after a fantastic battle with Haga. In fact, it should have been Haga’s race but his crazed riding shagged his tires and allowed Corser through in the last laps. Laconi finished a distant, and struggling, third. However, Haga learned from the first race and put that knowledge to good use with an authoritative win in the second race. Corser and Vermeulen both turned in strong rides but it was all Haga in race two.

Race nine was held at the Assen circuit in the Netherlands. This is the home circuit of the Ten Kate Honda team and the pressure was on Vermeulen to get focused after an impressive, though inconsistent, start to the season. As it turns out, the young Aussie did just that by doubling both races of the weekend. Toseland, who had struggled at Brands Hatch, came through for a pair of podium finishes with a second in race one and a third in race two. Haga swapped the two spots with Toseland between the two races. However, the real surprise of the weekend was Corser who, for the first time of the season, didn’t finish on the podium and thus broke his string of sixteen straight top three results.

Corser bounced back at the next race at the Lausitzring in German with a third place finish in the first race, being beaten by a dual Vermeulen and Haga. Race two was another barn burner but this time it was Lorenzo Lanzi, standing in for the injured Laconi, who stormed away to victory in race two. Vermeulen and Haga continued their battle but had to settle for second and third, respectively, after Lanzi dominated the race.

Coming into the penultimate race of the season at Imola, Vermeulen needed a double win to mathematically keep the championship alive. The stuck to his plan with another impressive ride and a win in race one but Corser did what he needed to do by finishing second. Haga finished out the top three finishers. Then came the rain and the officials had to cancel the race. This took away the points that Vermeulen desperately needed and thus handed the 2006 World Superbike Championship title to Troy Corser.

The final race of the year, at Magny Cours, was a fascinating race. Vermeulen, determined to show he could have won the title had all the races been run, won the first race. Meanwhile, Kagayama returned to his early season form with a strong second place finish. It was Toseland, also trying to make a point after a dismal season on the Ducati, who rounded out the podium. Race two was another exciting race with Lanzi taking his temporary factory Ducati to his second win. Kagayama again took home second after a great duel with his fellow countryman Haga.

When the points for the season were added up, it was Corser with 433 and the title. Vermeulen was 54 points back with 379. Haga was in third, over one hundred points down on Vermuelen, at 271. Toseland was fouth with 254 while Kagayama was just two points back in fifth sitting on 252 points. The second half of the top ten was headed by Laconi in sixth with 221 points, Walker with 160, Pitt just behind him with 156 and Lanzi just a few more back at 150. Finally, it was Chili who rounded out the top ten with just 131 points.

I think the major stories of the season were:

First up, the strength of the Suzukis. Of the 23 races run, GSXRs won 9 of them. Of the 69 possible podium positions, the Alstare Suzuki teammates carried 26 of them.

Second, from a slightly higher altitude, is that dominance of the four cylinder bikes. Of those same 23 podium positions, the inline fours took 17 of them. Of the 69 podium spots, a stunning 52 of them.

Third, the Pirelli tires continue to lack compared to the Michelin and Dunlops that pr0ceeded them. Lap times in 2005 were similiar to 2004 and still generally slower than 2003. Additionally, the tires were visibily sliding after the first third of each race. While the spec tire does level the playing field and put all the riders on an equal footing, I think the tires are actually holding the riders back and perhaps leveling things too much. Also, when these greasy tires do let go, it generally results in a nasty high side. Removing a competitive advantage is a good thing but decreasing the safety of the racing is another. Pirelli needs to step up to the plate in 2006 with a better tire.

Fourth, you can teach an old dog new tricks. Corser seemed washed up and ready for the retirement home after three years on the dodgy Foggy Petronas FP1 but he showed the world that he’s faster now than he’s ever been. His utter domination of the races in 2005 make him a worthy champion to carry the World Superbike #1 plate for a second time.

Finally, I do think that despite being dominated by one of the most experienced riders in the paddock, the series still showed a lot of hope for the future. Clearly Vermeulen backed up his incredible 2004 year with a second season of contending for the title. Likewise, it is hard to ignore the two wins by the young Lanzi as a sign that he will play a big role in the future of the series. Kagayama looked like a championship threat at the beginning of the season but faded in the middle before returning to form with strong finishes at the end. He is clearly someone who will help shape the future of the sport. Finally, Neukirchner’s initial podium pegged him as a future star but his five DNFs during the season show that he still has plenty to learn.

Alright, with the series review out of the way, let me take a second to rate my own predictions. As I mentioned at the top of this article, I did a posting before the 2005 season where I ranked each rider. I had some misses but I also had a few direct hits.

I forecast that Laconi would win the championship. Survey says “Baamp". However, I also said that if he didn’t win he would be out at Ducati and perhaps the series. He did get shown the door out of Bologna and nearly missed riding in ‘06 altogether until PSG-1 Kawasaki came up with a third bike.

I also predicted that Vermeulen would be the biggest threat for the championship. I hit the bulls-eye there, though it was Corser he challenged rather than Laconi.

As for Corser, I said that I thought he and Alstare would struggle getting the GSXR into WSBK trim. Oh, could I be more wrong. He not only booted the Ducati guys off the podium, as I’d hope, he nearly locked them out of the top step.

I won’t bother going through them all but I think I did a pretty decent job with my predictions. I certainly think I had a greater than 50% success ratio. I’ll do a similar preview for WSBK in a couple of weeks and then rate myself again at the end of the season to see how I do.

Alright, well, the 2005 season was a fantastic one for World Superbike. In fact, the return of the Japanese factories, even if it is only with back door help to their support teams, so completely reversed the previous trend of the grid being dominated by Ducatis that ‘05 may have been the most important season ever in the series history. With experienced big name riders like Corser, Laconi, and Chili being joined by ex-MotoGP guys in 2006 the competition will only improve. Then add in the young bucks like Lanzi, Neukirchner, Pitt, Muggeridge and Kagayama who are trying to dethrone the elders of the sport and you have a whole other level of excitement. 2005 was great and I expect even more to come in 2006. Tune in and enjoy!

[image from the Suzuki web site.]

Somehow, I always seem to get myself in over my head. A little over a year ago, I had a little too much time on my hands and decided to start a blog. It then proceeded to swallow my life for much of 2005.

Then, over the recent three day Martin Luther King, Jr Memorial holiday weekend, I again had a little extra time on my hands and thought “Hey, I should do a podcast". Well, the last three weeks have been a virtual haze of audio recording software, computer speakers, jumbled note pads and late nights talking into a microphone. I’m now convinced that I’ve finally gone completely over the edge and that I should be shot for starting a podcast. Nonetheless, sometime after midnight Tuesday morning the WSBKPod podcast was born.

With this podcast, which I hope to put out weekly (if not weakly) I will be covering the World Superbike series. I’ll be covering the pre-season tests, doing race results, talking about the riders and passing along rumors that I read and hear throughout the year. Why did I pick the World Superbike series you might ask? Well, there is already a podcast dedicated to the MotoGP series so that was unavailable. Additionally, there is another podcast which touches on the AMA Superbike series and a third podcast which focuses on privateers racing in America. Thus my choice was primarily me attempting to fill a vacuum. Nonetheless, the 2006 World Superbike season looks to be the best it has ever been so I think it will be a great series to cover.

I’ll admit up front that there will be a bit of overlap between some of my blog postings and what I put into the podcast. However, I will do everything I can to keep the two unique. I will also admit that the first episode of the WSBKPod podcast is a bit dry. I had a lot to learn in a short amount of time (not to mention getting over the mental discomfort of knowing I was being recorded while I spoke) As a result, I wrote up a script and the process of reading it dulled down a lot of the passion I wanted to inject. I’ll try to improve on this in the future, especially as I become more proficient with the software and more comfortable talking into microphone.

If you like podcasts, please give it a listen. I’m open to hearing whatever comments, suggestions, and complaints you might have so that I can work on improving this as the project progresses.

[image from my photo collection.]

I thought that things would be so slow during the winter that I wouldn’t have enough unmentioned news items each month to do my monthly “Odds and Ends” postings. However, I have slacked off so much in my posting schedule that I now find it is the last day of January and there is a long list of things that I’d intended to talk about this month. So here is is, a January edition of the “Odds and Ends” postings.

The theme of this entry is going to be “dirty movies". Sorry, this isn’t a review of porn but instead the topics here are motorcycle movies and off-road racing. I’ll wait to talk about the MotoGP, World Superbike and AMA news in postings in mid-February (once I get back from Costa Rica). I haven’t been ignoring everything that is going on in the racing world, just haven’t had the time yet to talk about them in depth…its coming!

First up in the movie category has to be The World’s Fastest Indian. In the September ‘05 Odds and Ends posting I mentioned that this movie had been released in New Zealand but that it probably wouldn’t be coming to the US. Well, I’m happy to say that I was wrong and that the movie is now starting a national release this coming Friday, February 3rd. Given that the last motorcycle related movies to make it to the big screen were Torque and Biker Boyz, I think it is fantastic that a film is being shown that doesn’t make all motorcyclists look like the Las Vegas Extremes crew. From the movie trailer and the clips I’ve seen it looks like Anthony Hopkins does a great job with his portrayal of New Zealand bike builder Bert Munro. The plot should ring true to many riders since it is the story of one rider’s obsession with his bike and his desire to push the boundaries of speed. The supporting actor in the movie is Munro’s 1920s Indian motorcycle which Munro modified over a 25 year period into a Bonneville Salt Flats land speed bike. A fascinating story, a great actor and lot of cool motorcycle images. Alright, bikers, get out there and support this movie!

If you read the above statement criticizing the last motorcycle movies to make the big screen and thought I’d forgotten Dust to Glory, I didn’t. I just didn’t include it because it is technically only half about motorcycles since it covers the entire Baja 1000, cages and all. However, I recently bought the DVD and loved it. It is obvious that Dana Brown, like his father, has a soft spot for motorcycles and that he has a real talent for documenting the excitement of motorcycle racing. If you haven’t seen Dust to Glory, make sure you buy, rent or borrow it. It will have you talking about Mouse McCoy with your co-workers and talking about getting some Mexican dirt on your dual sport bike with your riding buddies.

Lets step away from the big screen now and dive into the DVD offerings. I recently borrowed Bang Production’s Enduro at Erzberg DVD from by buddy MikeDz and thought it was amazing. The Rodeo-X Enduro at the Iron Giant in Erzberg, Austria is won of the mind-bogglingly difficult races that was won by Brit David Knight in ‘05. While the focus of the movie is primarily on Travis Pastrana, it is the racing that really amazes (though Pastrana’s attempted back flip in the middle of a hill climb is pretty impressive as well). I think the best part of the movie is actually one of the pieces of bonus footage: a five minute long aerial shot from a helicopter following Knight on his final decent of the mountain. I’ll be buying a copy of this for my DVD collection.

One thing I’ve already added to my DVD shelf is the Bruce Brown’s Moto Classics boxed set. Unlike his previous releases, which were collections of unused film from the ‘On Any Sunday” film reels, this new boxed set is actually a set of three DVDs covering four races that Bruce Brown taped for ABC’s Wild World of Sports in the 60s: The 1968 Baja 1000, a 1967 Hare & Hound race through the Mojave desert, the 1967 Hopetown Classic and the 1970 Ascot TT. If you’re a fan of motorcycle history this is a really enjoyable set of DVDs to watch. I was fortunate enough to get them the weekend I came down with the flu so I spent a weekend glued to the TV (and glued to a box of lotion Puffs tissue). This is real “when men were men” stuff…no suspension, no brakes, unreliable motorcycles and tough courses. Some of the giants of our sport were caught on these tapes like Joel Robert, Roger de Coster, Mert Lawwill, Skip vanLeeuwen and J.N. Roberts. It almost makes we want to own an old Triumph but the DVD doesn’t have dodgy electrics and doesn’t strain your back when you pick it up.

Finally, when I get around to buying the Enduro at Erzberg DVD, I’ll also be buying a copy of Troy Lee Design’s 2 Laps 2 Go. I haven’t seen this one yet but I’m a big fan of Supermoto racing and I enjoyed the races during the 2004 season that I saw and I think Jeff Ward is a demi-god for winning the championship that year. The DVD should offer plenty of entertainment even if it just follows Ward backing his Honda into every corner at every track.

Alright, leaving the boob tube behind, let me get on to talking about the off-road racing that I mentioned at the start…the dirt part of the dirty movie theme.

The winner of the Enduro at Erzberg was the 2005 off-road superstar David Knight. The guy won Erzberg, won at the 2005 ISDE, won the 2005 World Enduro 3 Championship, won the AMA EnduroCross and cleaned up at the Red Bull Last Man Standing event. So how does a guy with that kind of record follow up? Well, by winning everything he enters in 2006, of course. The enduro giant, both figuratively and literally, won the UK’s Tough One event, a two hour extreme hare scrambles race split between daylight and nighttime. As the reigning champ from ‘05, Knight was forced to penalize himself with a self-selected handicap at the start of the race. He chose to start by having to sprint 1/4 mile to his bike when the green flag flew, putting him at the back of the 30 rider deep field in the Premier class. Yet despite his deficit, he still managed to lap the entire field including not only the Premier class but while also having to work his way past 30 Expert and 30 Clubman riders. The man is an animal.

Not content to rest on his laurels from the Tough One, Knight then headed over to Austria to compete in the Rodex-X indoor arena enduro that is part of the Die Bike Austrian Motorcycle show. As a quick aside, remember back in December when I was complaining about how lame the American motorcycle show is compared to the ones held in Europe? Consider this indoor enduro another data point to back that assertion up. Anyway, where was I? Oh yes, the enduro… Despite being held indoors the event is run in sub-zero temperatures and has a difficult man made terrain course like the one recently seen in the AMA EuduroCross. Naturally, Knight won both races but added another twist to impress the fans by finishing over two laps ahead of his nearest competitor. If anyone is placing best on the ‘06 World Enduro series, I think you better be putting that money on Knight. Oh, and if SpeedTV is considering whether they should continue showing the World Enduro races like they did in 2005, consider this a big vote “yes".

Thats it for this month.

[image from the Indian Motorbikes web site.]

There is an old proverb that says “The devil is in the details". The idea is that no matter how good the overall plan the minor things are what make or break any project. Well, this past week the Sepang track held the first tests of the year for the MotoGP teams and for many the success or failure of their upcoming race season will be determined in these next couple of tests. For today’s blog entry I’ll be talking about the teams and what some of those devilish details may be for each of them.

First up, lets look at the various Honda teams. The factory Repsol Honda team had a busy test program for Sepang. Primarily, they have to realign the development of their 2006 RC211V behind their new lead rider, Nicky Hayden, after focusing on Max Biaggi last season. Since Max and Nicky have dramatically different riding styles this means that the Honda engineers may have had to make dramatic changes to their bike between ‘05 and ‘06. This will be Hayden’s first time developing a MotoGP bike so he will have to learn quickly how to hone in on problems so that he can provide accurate feedback to the engineers after just a few laps. He will have to quickly and efficiently go through all the myriad options for the new bike to find the best base configuration. Then he can start the fine adjustments necessary to optimize the package. If he picks the wrong path this week he will probably be chasing his tail on setup all season long.

Next on the Repsol team’s list was the continuing effort to get MotoGP rookie Dani Pedrosa up to speed on the bigger four stroke after he spent the past two seasons dominating the 250GP series. The Spaniard’s small physical stature, as well as his lower muscular strength, means that the bike has to be adapted to fit him and Pedrosa has to develop the endurance needed to ride the bigger bike. Dani’s crew has to get the bike adjusted to match the rider, then get the rider up to speed on the bike and only then can they start to develop the combination of the two to get ready for the upcoming season.

The satellite Honda teams have their own challenges. The Konica Minolta Team has the biggest challenge because they haven’t made either of the official MotoGP tests since the last race of ‘05 and have thus not even started their development program. Their absence is probably due to the costs required to travel to and take part in these tests but their chance of being competitive in ‘06 are dramatically reduced by missing these tests. This is a real pity because rider Makoto Tamada seems capable of running up front but will likely be unable to do so until the team has had a chance to find the correct setup for his new model RC211V…something that is particularly difficult to do during the race season.

On the opposite end of that spectrum is Team Gresini rider Marco Melandri. Like Hayden, Melandri is leading development of his team’s bikes and is returning to a team as the top rider. He’ll have the support of his team but will also have the added pressure of stepping into a lead development role after being the “B” rider behind Sete Gibernau in ‘05. Its unclear how soon Melandri will get an ‘06 RC211V so he could be doing his Sepang test work with a final model of the ‘05 bike or maybe he is already working with an ‘06 model. His new teammate, Toni Elias, on the other hand is having to learn a new bike having moved from Yamaha to Honda this year. In Elias’ favor is that he’s working with the same sponsor, Fortuna, from ‘05 while the rest of Team Gresini have to learn the responsibilities that come with representing a new company.

Finally, there is the smallest and newest Honda satellite team, Lucio Cechinello’s new MotoGP squad with rider Casey Stoner. Stoner has the advantage of having ridden a RC211V at the test last November but at that time it was with the now defunct Pons team. Now Stoner has to work out the kinks with a different team while also adapting to the big MotoGP bikes after a few seasons racing with Pedrosa in the 250 two stroke class. Fortunately, he raced for Cechinello’s team in 250s so he already knows his crew but it appears sponsor Carrera isn’t making the leap to the premier class so who knows who much money the team will have to support their ‘06 effort.

As long as I’m talking about Honda, I should also talk about Kenny Roberts, Sr’s TeamKR. After nearly withdrawing from MotoGP at the end of last year they are back for this season with a Honda motor in their custom made frame. Kenny Roberts, Jr was finally confirmed as their rider and was riding the new KR211V at Sepang. The big devil for them is adapting their chassis to the Honda motor in the short amount of time between the end of the previous season and the start of the next one. Based on their comments after this week’s test it appear their current frame is too stiff and this means the bike isn’t handling as well when leaned over as will be required to be competitive. They will have a new frame for the next test but it won’t have any alterations based on their Sepang tests, just an alternate geometry based on their initial designs from last Fall. Time is working against the TeamKR folks to get in enough testing to fully develop their new bike before the first race of the season. Worse yet, they can’t really test tires or suspension or engine electronics until they have the frame dialed in.

In this same boat is the Suzuki team. John Hopkins as been tasked with leading the GSV-R development which appears to be all, or at least mostly, new for ‘06. This means he’ll have to find the direction needed to guide development of a new bike, as opposed to working off an iterative design like Hayden is doing with the Honda. On the positive side, the old Suzuki seemed to have serious power problems so hopefully Hopper is working with a better motor this time around. Rumors have it that Suzuki may be trying out pneumatic valves and enhanced electronics, in addition to the normal chassis adjustments, exhaust configurations, suspension components and tires so there will be plenty of options to work through. On the negative side, he’ll be somewhat alone in this engineering work since his teammate Chris Vermeulen is a MotoGP rookie who is still trying to come up to speed on riding such a powerful bike. Fortunately, Suzuki test rider Kousuke Akiyoshi was on hand at Sepang to help out the two factory riders.

Kawasaki is a step ahead of Suzuki by working with an evolutionary design of their ZX-RR Ninja and also by having returning rider Shinya Nakano as their lead rider. On the other hand, they appear to be trying out another variation of the big bang firing order for their motor which means less peak power and more stress on the motor. Based on Kawasaki’s improvement the past two seasons it would appear that Nakano is an excellent development rider so they are probably in good hands in this regard. His teammate, on the other hand, is MotoGP rookie Randy de Puniet who will be learning to ride the big Kwack at these initial tests. Like Suzuki, this means that all the testing is dependent on a single rider. They are racing to speed up their development with the front running manufacturers while being hampered with the smallest R&D budget of the bunch and only minor sponsorship. Money is definitely the detail they have to overcome.

Even further down the testing path is the factory Yamaha team. They have two returning riders, a championship winning bike with only evolutionary improvements, an experienced crew and a big money sponsor behind them. The only things waiting to trip up this team will be of their own making. For Valentino Rossi, this is likely to be over confidence. It seems unlikely that Rossi would underestimate his opponents but given his apparent focus on testing Formula One cars in ‘06 it is possible that he’ll lose some of his focus. The only reason I think he would undertake these driving tests are because he feels certain that he can win in MotoGP while also learning a new form of racing. It is possible, however improbable, that this could finally be the chink his armor that his rivals have needed for the past five years. For his teammate, Colin Edwards, it will be finding the confidence to perform at his peak while being in the shadow of his spectacular teammate. The path to gaining this confidence took a small hit at Sepang when Edwards crashed during testing and his M1 burst into flames. The other impediment to gaining this confidence is knowing that development is based primarily on Rossi’s, rather than Edwards’ feedback, so the Texan will effectively be riding someone else’s bike. The claim as always been that Edwards and Rossi have similar riding styles so perhaps this year’s test results will finally prove or disprove that assertion. The only other trap waiting to catch the Yamaha team is the impending legal battle with Altadis over the claimed breech of the Gauloises agreement. if the litigation goes bad for the Japanese company they may end up paying significant penalties to their ex-sponsor. This is money badly needed to pay Rossi’s extravagant salary, development costs of the 800cc bike for ‘07 and to keep the current M1 successful in 2006.

Unlike the factory team, the only satellite Yamaha team this season is starting out with a lot of obvious pre-season challenges to overcome. First, the Herve Poncharal lead Tech 3 team is still working out how many riders they will have. At the moment, Brit James Ellison is confirmed but rumors are swirling about that Carlos Checa may be added before the next test at Phillip Island. Second, if Checa is added it is likely that they will then have to deal with having two different tire manufacturers supplying their team since Ellison is sponsored by Dunlop while Checa has a long standing association with Michelin. Third, the team is still looking for sponsorship after being abandoned by Fortuna during the Rossi-Gauloises fiasco. So with a new rider, new tires and no money the team will have to develop their bike for the upcoming season while also being distracted with rider, tire and sponsorship negotiations. It is not even the little details that will hamper these guys it is the overall chaos of their big plan.

With that depressing situation out of the way lets cheer up a bit by looking at the Ducati team. Lead rider Loris Capirossi is back and helping develop this sixth generation of the Desmosedici MotoGP bike. In addition, he has been teamed with star rider Sete Gibernau who has previous experience at developing bikes from his ‘05 stint with Team Gresini. Both racers have been turning fast lap times and both ended the Sepang test with bragging rights as the top two riders. The modifications to last year’s GP5 model seem to have again improved the Duck’s handling while maintaining it’s class leading power output. It also appears that Ducati learned from their ‘05 pre-season tests mistakes where a dramatically new slipper clutch/engine management system was forced on the riders and resulted in crashes and injuries. These in turn reduced testing time and eroded rider confidence in the bikes. Perhaps Ducati’s devil’s were washed out last year and they have a solid plan in place for this one.

Or perhaps they have just shoved those vexing details down to their satellite team D’Antin Ducati. Where the factory team is set with experienced riders and a strong sponsor, the D’Antin team is struggling. They recently signed ex-Kawasaki rider Alex Hoffman and recent World Superbike racer Jose Luis Cardoso as riders but both missed the first test back in November. Neither have raced a Ducati before, though Cardoso has raced for D’Antin in the past and Hoffman did race in MotoGP last year. The two riders will have to come up to speed on the customer GP6 Duc before they can begin to adjust the bike to try to improve their lap times. What the team does have going for it is an even closer level of cooperation with the Ducati factory compared to last year and a current version of the bike, rather than the one generation old version they have raced in the past. What they are going to be hampered by is the lack of sponsorship and thus the costs associated with both testing and racing.

Finally, the underdog of the season is the WCM-Bimota team who, like the Konica Minolta team, didn’t have the funding to run the pre-season tests. They are, in fact, at an even greater disadvantage because they are only a couple of months away from the first race and don’t yet have any signed riders or a running motorcycle. The current rumors are the Brit veteran Jeremy McWilliams and American GP rookie Jason Perez will be riding their bike and it is assumed they will be running a KTM powered bike that is somehow badged as a Bimota. However, until they show up for the first race of the year I think that their participation, as well as certainly their competitiveness, will be very much in question.

Let me say one more word about how the devil is in the details during testing. It is always risky to make assumptions about a team or rider’s preparedness based on the lap times given for a test. On the one hand, you never know when the rider is testing components and when they are focusing on a fast lap. Likewise, you never know when they are or aren’t throwing down fast laps with super sticky qualifying tires as opposed to testing at race pace on harder tires. However, there are two bits of data that are very useful and that is seeing all the lap times and the number of consecutive laps run throughout the entire test. Unfortunately, this data isn’t generally available and, if it is, it may come from the teams rather than an unbiased third party like the FIM and thus be of questionable accuracy. Only if we could see the times that riders have run consistently and the average lap times over a simulation of race distance would we be able to make some real predictions about the upcoming season.

However, the one abstraction of this that is available is to at least see who consistently shows up at the top of the lap charts that are released since those riders are the ones most likely to be doing their test and development work at a fast enough pace to be helpful. For example, the Ducati riders were fast the second and third days of the test. It is possible that this was due to their access to the spectacular Bridgestone qualifying tires but it is also likely that they wouldn’t have wasted the time on qualifying tires unless they felt their setup was pretty solid. If not, they would likely have continued to focus on their development work by running race simulations on race compound tires.

In contrast, a rider like Kenny Roberts Jr is consistently near the bottom of the lap time charts because he is currently running about three seconds off the pace of the front runners. Any development he does on the bike right now, aside from collecting data on their frame stiffness issue, is unlikely to be useful later because the frame, suspension and tires will all react differently when dealing with the stresses created when running a faster pace. The sooner the frame is fixed, and no longer holding KRJR back, the sooner he can push up the lap times and start developing the bike at the speed it needs to run to be at the front.

Like the past few seasons, at this stage of testing it looks like the factory Ducati, Honda and Yamaha teams have done the best job of exorcising their pre-season demons. It looks like Gresini Honda are well positioned and that Kawasaki is again well placed to improve. Less clear is the situation at Suzuki though it does appear they are putting forth their strongest effort yet. Finally, it looks like the others are going to be struggling throughout pre-season testing and probably into the early part of the ‘06 season.

[image from the Yahoo Sports UK web site.]

So I, like most of the official motorcycle press, spent a lot of time last year heralding the new guys that were joining the sport of bike racing. Guys like James Stewart, Ben Spies, Max Neukirchner, and Marco Melandri got more than their fair share of bits and bytes at the beginning of the season. However, as it turns out, 2005 was a good year to be one of the old folks. Despite many current racers being considered near retirement age, the old guys generally stuck it to the youngsters last year. What is really amazing is that this trend was pretty consistent across all disciplines of motorcycle racing.

First off, the sports of Supercross and Motocross have always been considered a young man’s sport. They are two of the most physically intensive sports in the world and the combination of jumps, ruts and crashes can exact a harsh toll on the body. The top news story at the beginning of the 2005 AMA Supercross season was the 19 year old sensation James Stewart. However, at the end of the season, it was the seasoned veteran Ricky Carmichael, at 25 years old, who swept both premier AMA Supercross and Motocross classes. In SX, 23 year old Chad Reed was second overall but the runner-up in the outdoor series was Kevin Windham who is two years older than Carmichael. Impressive stuff for guys on the second half of their twenties but the real surprises are found just a little further down the championship points listing.

As I pointed out in a blog posting last season, old timer Mike Larocco embarrassed most of the factory teams by bringing his privateer Honda home in 5th place in championship. Not bad for a then 33 year old. Even 34 year old Jeremy McGrath turned in some strong riders in his one-off appearances in ‘05, showing that the King of Supercross can still teach the youngsters a thing or two.

Want to really blow your mind? Take a look at the AMA Motocross points table for 2005. Despite competing in the most physically demanding form of dirt bike racing, 40 year old John Dowd managed to snag 7th overall in the AMA Motocross division aboard his privateer Suzuki! This guy was born in 1965, turned pro in 1988 and was the 1998 West Coast 125cc Supercross Championship…the year Dowd start racing in the Pro ranks James Bubba Stewart was two years old and Chad Reed had just turned six. For a little perspective, remember that Reed finished the ‘05 season in 8th, 15 points *behind* Dowd, while Stewart finished up in 12th a staggering 135 points down on the vet. Lets all say it together now…"JD is the man!”

Alright, so the more experienced riders did well in the premier class. Surely the young guys made their mark in the entry level 125 classes. I mean, there has to be a whole hoard of teenagers out there just waiting for their chance to race with the twenty-somethings, right? Well, sorry to disappoint but the stats don’t bare that out either. The 125 champs, Grant Langton (1st in 125 SX East and 4th in 125 MX) and Ivan Tedesco (1st in SX West and 1st in 125 MX), are both already in their twenties. Langston was 23 last year and and Tedesco a year older. Not exactly ready to hand up their riding boots but not representative of a youth movement either.

Fortunately, things in the dirt world aren’t totally bleak. James Stewart looks to have turned around a miserable ‘05 and is riding strong this year and starting to live up to the hype. The teenage Alessi brothers seemed to have knocked the edge off their egos and are steadily improving as riders. Ryan Sipes, who had some strong showings in the 125 class last season, is just barely breaking the twenty mark. The two Ryans, Villopoto and Mills, are still in their teens and both are riding well so far in this year’s Supercross Lites class. Hopefully these are the guys that can step it up and run with the grey hairs. Frankly, I think they will have to if they want to justify their getting a factory ride in the year couple of years.

Okay, lets shift gears now and look at my personal favorite: Road racing. Its generally understood that road racing is an environment where older and more experienced riders can be competitive against the young up-and-comers. Still, the stats for 2005 have to be a little disappointing for the folks that are looking to the younger generation for the next big thing. Of the four championships crowned in the AMA series, three of them went to riders who are in their thirties. Matt Mladin won his *sixth* AMA Superbike title while at the same time celebrating birthday number 33. His 32 year old teammate Aaron Yates topped the ultra-competitive Superstock class to put a third championship trophy on his mantle. Miguel Duhamel, the elder statesman of the AMA series, brought home his seventh AMA title by winning the Formula Xtreme class despite being just a couple years shy of forty. Even Tommy Hayden, the relative spring chicken of the 2005 AMA champions, isn’t exactly representing the youth movement since he was 27 when he sewed up his second straight AMA Supersport title. This trend towards old riders is generally true across the entire AMA Superbike paddock with only a handful of riders under the drinking age and all of them eligible to vote.

Okay, lets look a little further afield. 2005 World Superbike Champ Troy Corser was 34 when he lofted the title trophy last summer. In fact, the WSBK paddock has more riders over the age of 25 than they have riders under that age and the series appear to be skewing their average even higher in 2006 with ex-GP castaways like Alex Barros, Troy Bayliss and Max Biaggi rumored to be racing there. It is nearing the point where WSBK teams should drop sponsorship from youth oriented companies like Corona or Koji and switch over to old foggie brands like Geritol and Metamucil.

Alright, since I mentioned the topic of MotoGP up there I’ll admit that things are looking better in the Grand Prix paddock. While seven time World Champ and 2005 title winner Valentino Rossi isn’t exactly a rookie at 26 he’s also a decade years younger than some of his competitors were in ‘05. Things really start to look up when checking the stats of second place Marco Melandri (23) and third place Nicky Hayden (24). The outlook is even brighter when checking the age of the new comers to MotoGP for ‘06 as Dani Pedrosa, Casey Stoner and Chris Vermeulen are all under 25. Finally, things are downright heartening in the 250 and 125 classes were the average age on the podium is regularly under 20.

Alright, how about a couple more quick examples of how old age and experience is overcoming the exuberance of youth? In the world of AMA Flat track racing, it has been Chris Carr who has dominated for the past half decade. The younger riders in series look up to him as a mentor and, at 37, its a good thing they do because he is old enough to be their father.

Finally, as a sign of respect, I’ve saved the oldest for last. Logic would dictate that a rider that is 44 years of age shouldn’t be able to win at anything in competitive motorcycle racing. Yet the legendary Jeff Ward did just that in 2004 by tying up the premier class in the AMA Supermoto series and it was only a stalled bike in the final round that prevented him from winning it in 2005 as well. In fact, the past three seasons have netted Ward one Supermoto championship and two second place finishes…not bad for a guy who won seven AMA Motocross championships in the 80s.

I want to see the various forms of motorcycle racing grow and thus I’m always looking at the young guys to see who will be the next big thing. However, for 2006, I have to say “Viva la Veterans!".

[image from the Motocross.com web site.]

The drought in my blog postings seems to have coincided with the start of the 2006 AMA Supercross season so I’m already falling a little behind in commenting on what is happening in the deafening and dirty world of indoor motorcycle racing.

Well, the first sound to roll out of the arena this season has been the thundering sound of four strokes. Just as the big thumpers swallowed the motocross season in one big gulp in ‘05 they have now turned their appetite to supercross. Everyone has known that the two strokes where soon going to puff their last cloud of blue smoke but a few people have undoubtedly been surprised by just how fast this wave of cam shafts and overhead valves has descended upon the supercross landscape.

The second sound, immediately following the first, was a deafening shattering sound when James Bubba Stewart crushed the year long reputation he’d gained as being immature. Stewart’s legacy from the ‘05 Supercross and Motocross seasons where that he was blindingly fast but unable to control his emotions and that he was destined to crash his brains out long before he’d win any titles. (I myself put those same criticisms on this blog and still stand by them based on what I saw last year). However, Stewart showed up at the Amp’d Mobile World Supercross opener in Toronto and flat humiliated the assembled masses. No small feat since both Ricky Carmichael and Chad Reed, the current superstars of supercross, were in attendance. In fact, Bubba was so on his game in Canada that he crashed on the first lap but still went on to smoke the field by 5 seconds. Since one win, especially a win after a crash, doesn’t set the record straight Stewart when on to the second round at Vancouver and did it all over again. James is fast, incredibly fast, but also seems to have his head in gear as well.

With the tinkling echos of the exploding Stewart image still coursing through the paddock, the next sound was the huff and puff of the rest of the field trying frantically to up their game. In particular, both Ricky Carmichael and Chad Reed left Canada with a angry look in their eyes. I have a feeling their trainers got a phone call early Monday morning after the Vancouver races telling them not to make any plans for the next few weeks.

Around mid-December the sounds again changed and this time it was a big whump sound followed shortly thereafter by a lot of cussing. That was when Kevin Windham got launched off his Honda while training and broke his arm. The accident was bad enough that Windham is probably out for the first half of the 2006 SX season. If you listen careful, you can hear the sickening sound of the life leaking out of Windham’s professional career. 2006 seemed like a make or break year for the likable Honda rider. He already had SX experience on the four strokes, he’s earned a strong (if distant) second to Carmichael in the outdoor series and he had the hopes and dreams of Big Red resting on his shoulders. Its gonna take a second miraculous comeback for him to recover from this accident…

When the starting gun cracked off a shot in Anaheim for the first official round of the AMA Motocross series, it was again Bubba that was making the most noise. Carmichael lead early but then went into the dirt and Stewart decided not to hang around in second while RC was dusting himself. He again flew to the front and won the race in fine style. However, both Reed and Carmichael were in touch this time around so the other message that was loud and clear is that they had both gotten the hurry up message from the Canadian rounds. If the race at Anaheim did anything it was to convince everyone that they better get the 2006 Supercross rounds programmed into Tivo. We won’t want to miss a single round.

Then, bang, things exploded again last weekend when the second AMA round burst into Phoenix. In a reversal of the Anaheim race, it was Stewart who crashed out during the race and Carmichael that looked dominant. Reed ran up front early in the race but a big incident in which the Aussie spectacularly crashed but somehow missed the hitting the ground part. This handed the lead to RC while Reed got the bike pointed back in the right direction and got back up to speed. Bubba charged from the back of the pack to third with Chad hanging onto second. The big wins put Carmichael and Stewart even in points but Reed’s consistent second places have him only one point behind. Exciting stuff.

The top three riders weren’t the only ones making noises. First up was the sound of stiff joints and geritol bottles being cracked open as Iron Man Mike Larocco picked up where he left off in ‘05 by smacking the youngsters around. He took the finish line jump at Anaheim in fourth place behind Stewart, Reed and Carmichael. Then, as a followup lesson to the whippersnappers in the field Jeremy McGrath stuck it to them in Phoenix by finishing in fourth (again behind Carmichael, Reed and Stewart). The Rock kept it in the top ten with an eighth at around two. Maybe its because I have a head of grey hair or maybe its because I’m stick of hearing cocky little punks talk smack in front of their factory semis while finishing outside the top ten but I think it is awesome that these older racers are doing so well. It is time the younger factory riders catch the clue that even if they aren’t good enough (yet) to run with the front three they damned sure better make sure they’re fast enough to beat the guys who are eligible for the vet class. Besides, the roar of the Phoenix crowd when Showtime McGrath and his ring-ding two stroke went to the front on lap one brought back some great memories.

That’s still not it for the soundscape that is the 2006 Supercross series. Another distinctive tone was the forehead slaps from the AMA officials when they realized that these big, powerful four strokes where faster than the current track designs allowed. In Canada, the front guys weren’t carrying much corner speed but would just slam the bike into the corners on the brakes, get the bike back upright and then still have enough acceleration to go from a dead stop to nailing a big triple in just a few yards. By the third race at Anaheim the track layout seemed to have gained back some complexity but then some of the riders complained it was too tough. Hopefully, the designers can find a way to build tracks that are challenging for the four strokes without being so dangerous that riders are getting hurt. The deep trenches in the Phoenix whoops seemed like a good design, as did the rhythm section in Anaheim. In fact, I think even the dry, dusty track surface at Phoenix added another level of complexity that was good for the competition.

Thank you sir, how about another? Well, maybe some moaning is what we should be talking about. That moaning being the sound of the rest of the field after being handily spanked four races in a row. Last year, it seemed pretty obvious that the depth of talent was rising in the 125 class (now called Lites) while it was shrinking in the 250 class (now just called Supercross). Well, now it is easy to see why that is happening…the front three are so far ahead of everyone else on the track that even crashes aren’t keeping them off the podium. Sponsors have to be questioning why they are shelling out bucks to put their name on rider’s bikes when those bikes are never getting any camera time. In fact, the guys at the back of the field are probably more sponsor friendly because they are getting lapped twice and thus offer up twice the opportunity to show up on TV. Meanwhile, the Lites class is chock full of talent and is already offering up close racing and a variety of fast guys. The cha-ching of sponsorship change may soon be falling into the coffers of Lites riders rather than those in the supposed premier Supercross class.

One thing I don’t want to hear this season? The ambulance. With Windham already out, the field of potential race winners has shrunk 25%. With the front three all riding on the ragged edge (and all three having fallen or nearly fallen a few times already this season) is seems like the danger level is well into the red. There is a barely controlled intensity to the riding right now and just a little bad luck could result in a season ending crash. Lets hope these guys ride hard, but safe, this spring so we can enjoy the competition all season long.

Okay, that does it for tonight. The next sound you hear is the last byte of data falling into the bit bucket as I sign off. Have a good, and silent, night.

[image from the Discover Today’s Motorcycling web site.]

I’ve written a couple of times now about my upcoming motorcycle trip to Costa Rica…first in September and then again in October. Well, the trip is now just a couple of weeks away, so I thought I should do one last update before leaving…

The first big news is that our little gang of adventurers has grown from three to five with the addition of my buddies Flash and Dork Shoei coming on board, in addition to myself, Todd Unpronounceable and Hubert. This could be bordering on too big a group, if only because different riding styles, different personalities and just plain group dynamics can be an issue. Fortunately, I’ve ridden with all these guys before so I think we’ll be alright. Besides, since I am at the sucky end of the dirt riding skill spectrum it is possible I’ll end up being the one pissing everyone off…

We are all pretty excited about the ride. As I mentioned in the October update, our plan is to split our riding time between the Nicoya Peninsula and the Osa Peninsula. At that time we had the bike rental and airplane tickets but not much else.

Since then we have booked reservations at hotels in San Jose, Montezuma and Puerto Juminez. While having hotel reservations locks us into a set schedule, it also frees us up to ride all day without having to get to the day’s destination early in order to find lodging. Additionally, by basing ourselves out of one town in each of the two places we want to check out we can leave our bike’s luggage at the hotel for the days we are out out exploring rather than having to lug it everywhere we ride.

Also checked off the list since the October posting is stocking up on info about Costa Rica. I bought a Fodor’s Costa Rica 2005 guide book, as well as a nice National Geographic map of the country. I doubt the map will be all that helpful, as I understand the roads aren’t well marked, but if nothing else it will give me something to read while the other guys figure out where we are. I also found a website with GPS data for Central America but the Costa Rica data looks pretty bad since the coastline of the Bay of Nicoya doesn’t exist. Nonetheless, I’ve loaded up my Garmin Quest anyway. Perhaps between the GPS and the map I can at least determine where I am, even if I can’t figure out how to get where I want to go.

I decided not to bring my trusty one piece Aerostich Roadcrafter suit so I bought a Kilimanjaro Air Jacket made by First Gear. My only complaint with the Kili Air is the rather wimpy armor that is included so I upgraded the shoulder and elbow armor with a kit from Bohn Armor. The kit is excellent but unfortunately, the back protector won’t fit in the small pocket sewn into the Kili so I’ll have to use the stock foam until I can cut down the Bohn unit. I’ll be using my ancient Shoei helmet, Alpinestar gloves, Aerostich Combat touring boots and a basic pair of motocross pants and a jersey. Oh, and I’ll have a Camelbak as well…

Perhaps the first adventure of the trip took place before I even left the old US of A. I made the mistake of wandering into a travel clinic last week to see what immunizations were recommended for Costa Rica (and Tibet, where I’ll be travelling in August). If you believe the nurses at a travel clinic, the entire world is a huge, dank cess pool of disease. It took me a while to shake off their fear message and focus on what I was really worried about…stuff that might kill me rather than just make me sick. I left with a sore arm, a shot for Hepetitis A & B and some Malarone pills for malaria. I haven’t decided yet if I’ll take the malaria medicine but I don’t have to make that choice until two days before I leave. I guess that if I come back with yellow fever, typhoid, rabies, polio, influenza or measles then I’ll look like an idiot but I feel like having some crazy mixture of vaccinations could be unhealthy as getting the tropical disease I’m trying to avoid… I still have to go back two more times to finish up the Hep A & B shots so I can always get additional vaccinations for Tibet after returning from the Costa Rica trip.

I’m also considering joining the Diver’s Alert Network. I don’t (yet) scuba dive but one of their membership benefits is $100,000 in Emergency Medical Evacuation. Any time I’m going riding with Todd I carefully examine my medical insurance but since my current policy only covers the bare minimum if I’m out of the country it wouldn’t hurt for me to have some extra protection. If nothing else, DAN guarantees to be able to get my broken and battered corpse back to the US if Todd leads me off a cliff or something.

I’ve also spent the past week pre-packing all my gear. The only luggage we’ll have on the KTM LC4 is a tail trunk. Since I have to fit everything in such a small space I’m trying to carefully organize everything. At the moment my clothes, shaving kit and miscellaneous other gear all fit in a 10″x10″x10″ space so I think I’m okay. I’ve made duplicate copies of all my paperwork but should be able to leave that with my gear duffel at the rental place so won’t have to carry that on the bike. Between my Garmin GPS and Canon digital camera I’m the designated geek…hopefully I’ll make it back with stuff or else my wife will kill me when I try to replace it. I wonder if DAN’s insurance covers spousal danger? Otherwise, I’m just taking a pair of motocross riding pants, three dirt jerseys, some bicycling shorts, three pair of socks, my shaving kit and a pair of sandals. Travelin’ light…

Flash is packing the tools so the rest of us can save that space. Dork Shoei is covering the basic first aid kit, though I’m donating some Cipro and Immodium in case one of us drinks some bad water (or in case I, as the vegetarian, gets forced into eating the dreaded raw vegetable salad and spends the next week with GI “issues"…). Hubert has been voted into the role of our interpreter. He doesn’t know Spanish but since he is Swiss we figure he already knows some other language besides English and is thus one step ahead of the rest of us. He registered a complaint at this assignment but as we are functioning as a democracy we out-voted him. I have no idea what Todd’s contribution to this trip will be other than that it was his idea in the first place.

So that’s about it. Just a few loose ends to finish up and then its time to head south for some warm weather and motorcycle riding. A stark contrast to the current weather in the mountains of Colorado where its freezing, we’ve just recieved a foot of snow and my bikes are languishing in the garage hooked up to battery chargers. I’ll post a trip report once we get back. If I don’t get something posted by late February someone please call the US Embassy in Costa Rica and see if five Juan Does have been found pinned under motorcycles in some remote corner of the Osa Peninsula.

[image from the Costa Rica Motorcycle Tours web site.]

Last year I did a review of the Cycle World International Bike Show. Since I did a preview for this year’s expo back in November I guess I should finally get around to doing a review of the 2006 Cycle World show.

First, the good stuff:

My wife and I flew to Atlanta, GA for a friend’s wedding the same weekend as the Cycle World International Bike Show was in Denver but we scheduled our return flight for Sunday morning so we still had some time to take in the show. One of my stated goals for this year’s show was to find a couple of things my wife and I needed for the upcoming riding season. One of those was to get my wife some electrics to replace her old Widder vest that finally shorted out this Fall. Gerbing’s Heated Clothing had a booth at the show and were prepared to size and sale all their products at the show. Jonna picked up a heated jacket liner, thermostat, Powerlet wiring harness and a storage bag. She is happy and if the wife is happy, I’m happy.

The second reward from our visiting the show was my finding a great deal on the enduro jacket I’ve been price shopping all summer. A shop up in Ft. Collins called Beemers and More Motorcycle Works had a booth in the vendor area. They also had a sales rack which had most of the First Gear jackets including the Kilimanjaro Air Mesh jacket that I wanted for my upcoming Costa Rica trip. They didn’t have the size and color I wanted but agreed to order me one for the price listed on their sales rack. Good folks and a very good price for exactly the jacket I wanted.

Next up was having the opportunity to lust after the MV Agusta bikes in person. The highlight of their booth was the F41000S Corse bike but all of their product line are equally incredible. The Italians know how to build a beautiful bike and the folks at MV exemplify that. Even the routing of the brake lines is carefully planned out to run parallel to other lines of the bike so even the smallest details are visually cohesive. The F4 should be prescribed by doctors as a cure for ED…

Another cool bike to see in person was the historic 1980 Yamaha OW48 500cc Grand Prix bike once raced by Kenny Roberts Sr. This was on display next to Kenny Robert’s Jr’s 2000 Suzuki RGV 500cc GP bike which I’ve now seen three or four different times…Suzuki’s marketing department is sure getting their money’s worth out of that bike. Anyway, having the two bikes together made for a interesting compare and contrast moment, not to mention the thrill of seeing two historic Grand Prix bikes up close and personal.

Next up was getting to see the three new Ducati Sport Classic bikes on display. The marque bike of this line is the Paul Smart Replica and it is even cooler in person than in the photos. The green/silver paint job is a stroke of genius as it looks drop dead gorgeous. The big surprise for me was how much I liked the GT which had looked pretty ho-hum in the magazines. Finally, the Sport 1000 is really just a Smart replica without the big fairing but it is still a good looking bike. Any three of these would be a fun bike to own. I’m glad to see Ducati coming up with designs that aren’t following the styling trends of their recent bikes like the Multistrada, the 999 and the Supersport. I’m also glad to see another manufacturer coming up with modern retro-themed bikes to compete with the Triumph Bonneville series.

Finally, it was great to see some of the interesting new bikes for this year like the Kawasaki ZX-14R, the Aprilia SVX, the re-vamped Aprilia Tuomo, the Yamaha R1LE and the Moto Guzzi MGS/01. It also gave me another chance to sit on all the liter bikes from the major Japanese companies so I can continue my new bike shopping. The R1LE is the first Yamaha that pegs my meter in a long time but I’m still more likely to whip out my checkbook for the Kawi ZX-10R or the Suzuki GSXR. Surprisingly, the ZX-14R didn’t really excite me and the MGS/01 did. Perhaps it is because the Kawi was pretty much what I was expecting but the Moto Guzzi was so different from their other products. Finally, the SVX and Tuomo were seriously amazing to see in person. I knew I’d like the SVX but I’ve always hated the looks of the Tuomo so was shocked that I liked the 2006 model so much. Both are now on my list to be revisited when its time to put the new bike in the garage.

Synopsis: The show gave me a new jacket, a wife that is again excited about riding and a lot to think about in my quest for a new bike.

Now the negative things from the show…

First, KTM didn’t have a booth at the show. As I’ve mentioned in previous blog postings, I’d buy a KTM 990 Superduke tomorrow if they were available in the US. I was hoping for a chance to talk to a KTM rep in person to see if there were any plans to import the bike in 2007. With the dollar valued so low compared to the Euro surely the cost of a booth at the Cycle World show is about the same blow to their Marketing department as putting up a single poster for the Paris show. Whatever their motivation, not showing up is probably going to be their loss and some other company’s gain.

The second raspberry for the expo was that there was no Triumph booth at the show. One of the bikes I wanted to see the most was the new Triumph Scrambler which I think is dead sexy. For some bizarre reason Triumph decided not to include the Cycle World shows in their marketing budget this year. While I wanted to see the Scrambler for its sheer coolness factor I also wanted to check out the new Speed Triple as another bike that is on my shopping list. Oh well, at least Triumph has one up on KTM by actually having their bikes available for sale in this country…

Another disappointment was that BMW didn’t have their new 2006 models like the F800ST, K1200R, R1200GS Adventure and R1200S at the show. I’m not particularly interesting in buying any of these but it would be nice to see the new parallel twin motor, their boldest bike ever, the new and improved GS and BMW’s new boxer based sport bike. Basically, its another sign of how little importance the European bike makers place in the show that they aren’t putting for an effort to get their new bikes to the US in time to show them to customers at this time.

Another change for the worse was that so few of the booth had interesting race machines. In past years there have been Grand Prix bikes, factory superbikes, trick endurance racers, hand built supermoto bikes, desert racers and lots more on display. This year the pickings were slim and decidedly lacking in exotic hardware. For example, Kawasaki had Hayden’s Supersport bike, Yamaha had Disalvo’s Superstock bike and Honda had Duhamel’s FX bike. Yamaha also had Burkhart’s Supermoto Lite bike. In the off-road arena Honda, Yamaha and Kawasaki all had their factory Motocross bikes on display (Windham, Reed and Stewart’s bikes respectively). Still, nearly all of these bikes are production based machines being raced in nearly stock form. In contrast, there were loads of crappy choppers all over the place which means there was probably more titanium on custom show bikes than on race bikes. A disgusting turn of events!

The final disappointment was that AMA racer Eric Bostrom was only at Racing 2 Save Lives booth on Saturday but not Sunday. Since I couldn’t get there until the final day I missed a chance to talk with him about his 2006 deal with Yamaha. Getting a few first hand comments would have bee a nice addition to the blog. Oh well…

Overall, I was happy with the show but I’m still disappointed that US market in general, and the western states market in particular, has such relatively minor importance to the marketing departments of the major manufacturers. I’d hoped that things would continue to grow as the Cycle World show entered its fifth year but it seems to have taken a step backwards this year. Hopefully 2006 will be a big enough year for the European manufacturers like Triumph and KTM that they will join the show next year. Hopefully, the interest in the US generated by the ‘05 USGP will raise the awareness of racing here in the US so that the Big Four (Honda, Yamaha, Suzuki and Kawasaki) will again use race bikes as their booth eye candy rather than mangled, nonfunctional cruisers. Hopefully, the US market will be important enough to all the bike makers that a greater emphasis will be put on getting new models to the States in time to put in the Cycle World show rather than just rolling out the 2005 models for us to see. There is still room for improvement!

[image from my photo collection.]

This past week the 2006 Dakar rally completed it’s 15 day, 5613 mile journey from Lisboa, Portugal to Dakar, Senegal.

This year’s rally was again a challenging one made up of 15 separate stages with the longest being 543 miles (874 km) in length and the shortest clocking in at only 68 miles (110 km). Sprinkled throughout these stages were special sections where the riders could forget about navigation and instead just race against the clock through the stage in an effort to cut the fastest time. As I mentioned in my Odds and Ends posting back in July, the rally entries were sold out six months before the race and among those registered were 240 people competing in the motorcycle classes. The vast majority of the bikes were KTMs, in fact, there were 106 of the Austria bikes entered while the second most popular brand, Yamaha, had only half that number. The rest of the field was made up of a smattering of Hondas, BMWs, Suzukis, Kawasakis and an Aprilia. Finally a mix of ATV and sidecars completed the field.

The big news before the race were some rules changes that the Rally organizers put in place in an attempt to make the rally safer after two high profile deaths on the factory KTM team in ‘05. Most of these new rules were aimed at improving the conditions for the motorcycle riders, including: 1) mandating a shorter fuel range and thus lighter bikes, 2) imposing a maximum speed limit of 100 mph (160 km/h) for the bikes which would be enforced via GPS, 3) instituting a mandatory 15 minute rest at fuel stops, 4) and changing the starting order for the longer stages so that the slowest riders go first and thus have the largest amount of daylight in which to finish compared to the faster riders who would need less time for the stage.

Despite the new safety precautions this year’s rally was again plagued with tragedy. First, during stage 9 of the rally, KTM rider Andy Caldecott had a fatal crash while running at high speed across the desert. This accident was particularly devastating for the KTM team because it was very near the location of and very similar to the accident in 2005 that killed rally superstar Fabrizio Meoni. The entire paddock was shocked by news of the Australian’s death and the 10th stage of the rally was cancelled out of respect for his fellow rider’s grief. Additionally, KTM effectively quit tracking the rally from a PR/marketing stand point after Caldecott’s death in an effort honor his memory (not to mention that their top two riders had effectively cemented their positions which took most of the excitement out of the rally anyway).

However, death didn’t just strike the riders this year. The biggest tragedy of the rally was that two children were struck and killed by rally cars in the final two days of the event. As a result of these fatalities the final stage, a loop around Lac Rose in Dakar, was un-timed and run only for ceremonial purposes. The actual scoring of the rally reverted back to stage 14.

When the checkered flag flew and the numbers were crunched it was Marc Coma, the KTM mounted Spaniard, who won the motorcycle division with a time of 55:27:17. 1 hour, 13 minutes and 29 seconds back was fellow KTM teammate, Frenchman Cyril Despres, with a time of 56:40:46. The final podium spot went to Italian Giovanni Sala who brought his KTM home in third at 57:57:05, nearly two and a half hours behind Coma and over an hour behind Despres.

Other news worth mentioning is that Team USA rider Chris Blais, also on a KTM, came in fourth with fellow American Jonah Smith bringing his privateer KTM over the line in 17th place to finish up a fantastic Dakar premier. Also of note, Charley Boorman of Long Way Round fame was out early with a broken arm (or possibly even two) after a crash during stage 6. Nonetheless, a valiant effort by the Brit. All of the top eight were on KTMs with Portugese rider Helder Rodrigues preventing a complete sweep of the top 10 by the Austria company by finishing 9th on his Yamaha. As is typical for the Dakar, over half the bikes failed to complete the rally with only 93 of the original 240 making it to the finish in Dakar.

I see a few things from this rally worth mentioning:

The first is obviously the continuation of the recent trend of great rally riders being kill during the Dakar rally. As with the Isle of Man TT and the Macau GP, I firmly believe that any event has a right to run as long as the riders chose to race (and there aren’t contractual and/or championship obligations to do so). Still, it is becoming increasingly painful to cover such events when the best riders of each respective discipline are being killed each year. As the bikes get faster and faster the danger levels increase and I think even more needs to be done by the organizers to balance the challenges of the event with the safety of the riders and spectators.

Second, this year’s Dakar was a turtle versus the hare battle in which Marc Coma won the overall without taking a single victory in any of the individual stages. It is worth noting that the Spaniard’s ability to be consistently fast over the entire course of the rally was a more successful strategy than a rider like second place finisher Despres who won four of the stages (and was in the top three on seven different occasions) yet whose time when averaged out over the course of the rally still put him over 75 minutes behind Coma at the finish. Undoubtedly some of this was luck but then again, as the saying goes, perhaps the riders were making their own luck.

Third, I think this year shows the success of the Team USA Red Bull KTM team who started two years ago with the goal of building up an American rider to be a world class rally racer. After 15 stages, American Chris Blais was only 10 minutes behind third place rider Sala at the finish and thus tantalizingly close to a podium in only his second Dakar. His best stage finish was a fantastic second place on the 352 mile long day 8. Also impressive was rookie Jonah Street who also scored a second place stage finish during the rally, his coming during the next to the last timed stage on day 13. Clearly the Americans have rapidly risen from being also-rans to being front runners in the Dakar. Hopefully, this will increase both fan interest and media coverage in the event next year.

Finally, I want to mention that Charley Boorman started his rally with more than just the normal equipment carried by a contestant. He also brought along a film crew and a bunch of camera equipment. This goal was to make a documentary movie about his running the Dakar rally. Despite his injury in the middle of the event, his film crew continued on following the rest of the Dakar. I hope that this project comes to fruition, as I’d love to see a well done movie on the Dakar in the same vein as the recent Dust to Glory movie which captured the excitement of the ‘05 Baja 1000. Best of luck to Charley in this endeavor.

[image from the Official 2006 Lisboa Dakar web site.]

So, it has been over a month since I posted my last entry. I guess I took a longer break than I’d anticipated after hitting the one year milestone on the blog. Well, all that time off hasn’t been completely wasted though it will take awhile for the full impact the break to actually bear any fruit here. On a more personal note, I also used that time off to take a relaxing holiday vacation to Savannah, GA, to catch up on some other aspects of my website that needed attending, to make a small dent in the large stack of books that had built up on my night stand and to watch quite a few movies that had been on my “must see” list. I’m now recharged and very excited about resuming the blog here in the new year. I hope all the readers had a good holiday and that you are excited about the upcoming year of motorcycling. Now, on to one of the backlog of topics I’ve been wanting to write up…

When the MotoGP class introduced 990cc four strokes in 2002 (after having been dominated by 500cc two strokes since 1975) it brought Grand Prix bikes to a new level of performance. It also opened the door for speculation that the racers of four stroke production based Superbikes could be the future stars of MotoGP rather than the two stroke 250cc GP riders which made up the traditional training ground of world champs. The most logical feeder series for MotoGP was seen to be the World Superbike series and by 2003 two of the biggest stars of World Superbike were sitting astride MotoGP bikes: Colin Edwards and Troy Bayliss .

However, a funny thing happened on the way to the 2003 MotoGP championship…the old guard continued to dominate aboard the new four strokes. Rossi won the title in ‘03 with Gibernau and Biaggi rounding out the top three. Young American Superbike champ Nicky Hayden was the top guy with previous production bike experience finishing out his freshman year in fifth just behind Loris Capirossi.

Despite other Superbike pilots like Neil Hodgson, Noriyuki Haga, John Hopkins, Ruben Xaus, Shane Byrne, James Ellison and Kurtis Roberts all giving the MotoGP bikes a go over the past few years, none have had much success against the more experienced Grand Prix racers in general and Valentino Rossi in particular. For 2005 there appear to be only two riders on the MotoGP who came up through the World Superbike ranks: Colin Edwards and Chris Vermeulen.

In contrast, half of the riders currently confirmed for the ‘06 World Superbike season have prior Grand Prix experience: Norick Abe, Alex Barros, Franco Battaini, Troy Bayliss, Max Biaggi, Pier Francesco Chili, Troy Corser, Michel Fabrizio, Noriyuki Haga, Regis Laconi, Fonzi Nieto, Andrew Pitt, Roberto Rolfo, Chris Walker and Ruben Xaus. Of these riders, eight are guys who came up through the GP ranks (Abe, Barros, Battaini, Biaggi, Chili, Laconi, Nieto, Rolfo) before moving into World Superbikes. This leads to the question of which is really the feeder series for which?

Granted, most of the riders moving from MotoGP to World Superbike are generally regarded as being in the twilight of their careers but that doesn’t make the depth of the field any shallower. In fact, given the number of riders over the age of 30 who have won titles in the past few years the whole idea that someone is beyond winning at age 35 is being seriously challenged. The MotoGP series is banking on younger riders, primarily those from the 250cc class, to carry their torch into the future and of the current MotoGP riders only six have previous world championships (Rossi, Edwards, Pedrosa, Melandri, Vermeulen, Capirossi). World Superbike, on the other hand, seems to have built a hugely competitive roster made up primarily of experienced riders of which ten have prior world championships (Corser, Bayliss, Biaggi, Iannuzzo, Foret, Gimbert, Fabrizio, Muggeridge, Alfonsi and Pitt). Clearly World Superbike holds the edge when it comes to bragging rights about their riders.

Now, I don’t think that any current rider would pass over a decent MotoGP ride for a World Superbike ride but I do think that the World Superbike series has taken a huge step forward in the past year towards becoming the premier world class motorcycle road race series. Depending on what happens with riders and teams in ‘07 when MotoGP switches to the 800cc bikes (and costs again take a big jump) there is still a chance for World Superbikes to surpass MotoGP in power, popularity and perhaps even prestige. In the meantime, MotoGP needs to hope some of their young riders can finally beat Valentino Rossi so they will deserve the reputation afforded GP racers.

[image from the Max Biaggi web site.]

Since I’ve been slowing down on the blog postings, I haven’t been following all the races that have gone over the past month. Time to catch up on who has been hoisting the trophies lately.

First up is the big surprise that Honda has won the 38th running of the Baja 1000 with Steve Hengeveld, Johnny Campbell and Mike Childress on board their big XR. Not only did Honda best everyone in the desert but also brought home the runner up honors as well with XRs finishing 1-2. Even though this was Honda’s ninth consecutive win in the Baja 1000 they at least they made things a little easier on the competition since star rider Johnny Campbell was sick with a stomach ailment and struggled during his stints on the bike.

As if Honda’s win at Baja wasn’t surprising enough Brit Michael Rutter won the 39th annual Macau GP. This was the sixth win for Rutter on the dangerous street circuit. This ties him with Ron Haslam on all time winners list. Unfortunately, Rutter’s fantastic win was overshadowed by the death of Frenchman Bruno Bonhuil who was killed in an accident on the armco lined track. Many of the European riders sat out the event in honor of their fallen rival. There was a UK sweep of the podium as second place went to John McGuinness and third was Les Shand.

Dominance was the name even with two new events. David Knight has blown away the offroad community this year as the overall winner at the 2005 ISDE event, as champ of the 2005 Enduro at Erzberg and by bringing home the 2005 World Enduro 3 championship. He then showed up at the inaugural Red Bull Last Man Standing event and dominated from start to finish. At the end of the day, be brought home nearly $18,000 in cash. His win is all the more impressive since he raced the grueling event with the flu running two 40 miles loops during the day and then two 30 miles loops at night on his KTM. Second was Nathan Kanney and Michael Lafferty rounded out the podium.

As if being crowned the Last Man Standing wasn’t enough, David Knight then won the second annual AMA EnduroCross this month in Las Vegas. This added another trophy to his mantle, another $10,000 to his wallet and another boost to his reputation as the best off-road racer in the world. Just to prove that he always likes doing things the hard way he crashed on the first lap of his heat race. This not only meant he had to go through semis to make the final but that he was also racing with some pretty serious bruises. He got a horrible start in the main and crossed start/finish in nearly last place but then worked his way through for the win. Also impressive in the EnduroCross was old man John Dowd who came in runner up. Ricky Dietrich came home in third.

Okay, so really no surprises in any of these cases but great racing nonetheless. The Campbell/Hengeveld pairing aboard their Honda XR have dominated the Baja 1000 in a way that even Rossi or Carmichael would envy. Michael Rutter has found success at the Isle of Man but his career will probably be defined by his successes over the years on the Macau GP circuit. Finally, there is David Knight who is winning everything he enters this year. He is the best enduro rider in the world and has proven himself to more flexible than any other rider as well.

Great stuff from all of them.

[image from Dirt Rider Magazine web page.]

As regular readers will have noticed I decided to take a break over the last couple of weeks. Some of this was to recoup a small amount of sanity after being so focused on the blog over the last year and part was to enjoy a relaxing Thanksgiving holiday. However, I didn’t just sit around eating bon bons and dreaming of motorcycles but I also went on the offensive in my annual war to stave off the boredom of winter. As the snow flakes fell up here in the mountains of Colorado and the outside thermometer struggled to get above freezing I spent some time gathering provisions for the upcoming four month campaign I’ll be fighting against the bleak days between November and March.

Primarily, the supplies I need for this protracted battle are books. Specifically, books about motorcycles. To that end, I’ve stocked up a few that should keep my attention focused on bikes even when my own motorcycles are stored away in a chilly garage for the year.

Topping the list is Peter Egan’s Leanings 2. I’ve been a reluctant subscriber to Cycle World for over a decade and yet I continue to give them some money each year to keep their magazine arriving at my door step. I’m not a big fan of the publication as a whole but the simple fact that they continue to employ the two best writers of motorcycle stories in the world keeps me addicted to the rag. Those two are Peter Egan and Kevin Cameron. Two years ago, Egan put out a book which pulled together many of his feature articles from the past 30 years and called it Leanings. I read the thing cover to cover in a single weekend and then mourned the fact that I didn’t string out the pleasure over a longer period of time. Now he’s released a follow-up tome which collects many of his one page columns from that same time period. I’ve already burned through half the book in just two days and I’m torn between finishing it this week or dragging it out over the entire winter. Peter Egan is the high water mark of moto-journalism and re-reading his articles both shames me as a writer and inspires me as a motorcycle enthusiast.

Queued up next on the night stand is Dr. Claudio Costa’s autobiography titled Doctorcosta. I bought this a few months back but haven’t found the “Round Tuit” in order to crack the cover. Dr. Costa is the paddock hero of MotoGP and the stories of what he’s seen in his multiple decades of following the GP circus, along with the miracles he has personally performed in patching up injured riders, should make this an incredible read. I figure I’ll have it finished before Christmas and will then suffer the agony of waiting three more months before MotoGP action resumes.

Keeping with the MotoGP racing theme is Mick Walker’s Giacomo Agostini: Champion of Champions which is the biography of the fifteen time GP champ. The topic of Rossi being the greatest racer of all time is hotly debated and the best counter argument is just saying the word “Ago". I figure this book is worth the purchase price just to see the cool photos of Ago during his prime but it should also be a fantastic story as it traces Agostini’s story from childhood to motorcycle greatness.

The final book on my winter reading list, which coincidently is also another story of racing greatness, is Ed Youngblood’s Mann Of His Time. This is the biography of AMA legend Dick Mann. This guy is the iron man of motorcycle racing and was a hero to most of the racers I consider great: Kenny Roberts, Eddie Lawson, Wayne Rainey and others. If there was ever an era when motorcycle racers had to do everything, it was the age of the AMA Grand National Champion when riders had to race dirt track miles, half-miles, TT and road races in order to be considered the best. During these grueling years, Mann accomplished this lofty title twice. If I finish this before spring, I’ll still have time to write letters to Chris Carr begging him to come back road racing in ‘06, along with his flat track program, so we can see a multi-talented champ like they did it in the old days…

But man (or probably even Mann) can’t live by books alone. Also on the list for winter entertainment are a few DVDs:

First and foremost is the long awaited release of the Long Way Round DVD which will finally be available on December 13th. It has only taken them a year to release the thing! This isn’t the best motorcycle story ever told but it is good enough to watch again and again if only to inspire us to follow our dreams. Sure, we aren’t all rich movie stars but as long as we own a bike we can point that front wheel somewhere new and go for a ride. Besides, watching Ewan and Charley struggle through Mongolia should help prepare me for following my buddy Todd through Costa Rica.

Next month I’ll also be placing an order with Bruce Brown’s Monterey Media to pick up his newly released Moto Classics Box Set which includes footage Brown recorded while making On Any Sunday but hasn’t previously released. I have all the rest of the On Any Sunday movies so there is no way I’ll pass up getting this boxed set. Should make for some fine visual entertainment while watching the snow drifts build up on the deck some frigid February afternoon.

Speaking of Bruce Brown, I’m yet to watch his son Dan Brown’s Dust to Glory DVD but I have it on my “to do” list to finally pick it up for a little cold weather relief. What better contrast to a Colorado winter than to watch guys on motorcycles blast through the desert during the Baja 1000.

Finally, my Christmas wish is for Duke Video USA to finally release a NTSC DVD version of Best Bike GPs of the Decade. I first saw this film ten years ago and immediately wanted to own it but have held off year after year waiting for it to be available on DVD. A few months ago it was finally released in the UK in PAL format but they haven’t brought it stateside yet. US distribution of Duke Video products has just changed hands so hopefully the new company will speed up getting some of the PAL stuff converted over for us yanks. Come on, Santa, bring me this DVD!

[image from the Road & Track Magazine online shop web page.]

The past few weeks have really pulled back the curtains on the ugly inner workings of the MotoGP paddock. There has been a shake up in the bizarre love triangle that is the factory-rider-sponsor relationship and the fall out has given us a glimpse at exactly who calls the shots when it comes to racing at the highest level of the sport.

I’m going to use three different examples to illuminate this situation:

First up is a tale of riches to rags with one Max Biaggi as the star of the show. One year ago the word came down from the people on high at Honda that Biaggi was finally being given the opportunity of his lifetime. A ride on the factory Repsol RC211V with famed tuner Erv Kanemoto at his side. All of Honda’s development effort would be resting squarely on the shoulders of the veteran Italian rider and he was expected to wrest the MotoGP title away from rival Valentino Rossi and his Yamaha. That dreamy state lasted until the first race at Jerez and then quickly slipped into a nightmare season for the Roman.

As the races wound down Biaggi started making more and more negative comments to the press about the state of the bike and support he felt he was (or perhaps more accurately wasn’t) receiving from Honda. When the big bosses back in Tokyo heard about this they were less than impressed. In fact, they tried to keep him from racing at the final race at Valencia and promptly thereafter sent out a mandate to all the Honda teams saying that Biaggi would not be given a Honda for 2006. When Camel, Biaggi’s personal sponsor, heard this they threatened to pull their millions from Sito Pons satellite team. This set up a show down between Honda, Sito Pons, Biaggi and Camel. If there was ever a situation that would show who calls the shots in MotoGP, this would be it. And the result? Biaggi won’t be riding red next year and Pons won’t be getting any financial support from Camel for this team. Clearly Honda has shown that for next year they intend to be completely in charge of their MotoGP teams, even at the risk of ruining a faithful partner’s funding and maybe even threatening the team’s ability to exist. It also shows that Honda has no problem telling a major backer to go stuff themselves if the sponsor disagrees with corporate policy. Interesting.

Next up, is the state of affairs just down pit row in the factory Yamaha pits. There is a huge lawsuit brewing between Yamaha and Altadis who was their primary sponsor for the past year. Altadis signed a contract with Yamaha to sponsor the factory team under the Gauloises banner for the upcoming season. At the time the contract was signed there was not commitment from Rossi to ride the factory bikes and once that contract was signed it was with the understanding that Rossi would not run branding from a cigarette company on his bike, presumably to clear the way for future work with Ferrari and their primary sponsor Marlboro. (Why, exactly, Rossi didn’t sign with the Ducati team for 2006 since they already have Marlboro sponsorship is unknown).

When Yamaha told Altadis that Rossi would not be on the factory team Altadis deemed this a breech of the sponsorship agreement. As a warning shot Altadis pulled their Fortuna sponsorship from the Tech 3 satellite team for next season which has put them in a serious money crunch. However, Yamaha hasn’t backed down and now look likely to run without Altadis sponsorship in ‘06. What is surprising is that Yamaha approached Telefonica Movistar with an offer of having Rossi run under their colors but were turned down. In this case, Rossi laid down the law about the terms of having him ride with a tuning fork on his tank and the factory followed suit even at the risk of having to pay the full tab for both their factory and satellite team’s costs next year. In this case, the seven time world champ is the one in the cat bird seat and both the team and the sponsor have to play by his rules.

Finally, there is another conflict which also involves Honda but in this case it is with the Gresini satellite team. Gresini’s primary sponsor for 2005 was the Spanish telecom giant Telefonica Movistar. In addition to putting huge amounts of money into the Honda team they also had 250GP star Dani Pedrosa under personal contract and had brought up the Spanish youngster through the GP ranks. In fact, the company spends huge amounts of money in GP sponsoring not only individual teams but also paying for title sponsorship of some rounds of the series and also to sponsor some European feeder classes which development future talent. Telefonica is the dream partner for both the MotoGP series and the Honda teams.

At the end of this last season Dani Pedrosa’s contract with Telefonica expired and before it could be renewed Honda offered the 250 World Champion a direct contract and a chance to ride on the factory Repsol team as replacement for the departing Max Biaggi. Telefonica was furious that their star rider had been scooped out from under them and that he was put on the Repsol sponsored team rather than the Telefonica sponsored Gresini team. As reprisal, the telecom giant pulled their money from MotoGP altogether (even refusing the Yamaha/Rossi offer…something any other company would have begged to get) and brought their big fat check book to the Formula One cage racing series instead. Fortunately for Honda, they were able to sign Spanish star Toni Elias to Team Gresini and Altadis decided to spend their Fortuna backed support to the Honda team after pulling it away from the Tech 3 Yamaha squad. Honda set the tune and both Gresini, Pedrosa and Telefonica had to dance to it.

So what does all this mean? Well, I think it means that ultimately the entire GP paddock is following the lead of Valentino Rossi. Yamaha needs Rossi and had very little say in the terms. Honda has gone into desperation mode and will do whatever is necessary to build a rider line-up capable of challenging Rossi even if it means losing long time sponsors or pissing off faithful team owners. It seems clear that the factories have become tired of sponsors, particularly cigarette companies, being the ones that call the shots and have completely reshuffled the power pyramid in MotoGP. Whether the riders or the factories are in contol depends on the rider’s last name but there is no doubt that both are playing alpha dog over the sponsors right now.

[image from Moto Forum web page.]

Lately I’ve been doing a write up for each of the major international motorcycle expos like Paris, Tokyo, Birmingham and Milan. All of these shows represent the pinnacle of motorcycle marketing. The major manufacturers, along with hundreds of aftermarket companies, spend significant portions of their annual budget to make a big splash at these shows. From the stand point of a fan I’ll admit that getting an opportunity to attend one of these shows would be an incredible experience. Unfortunately, the cost associated with jetting off to Europe for a couple of days just doesn’t match up with my current salary no matter how much I fantasize about being able to do so.

However, I do have the time and money to attend the much more mundane Cycle World International Motorcycle Show which has been occurring at the Colorado Convention Center in Denver for the past four years. An international show like the International Motorcycle Exhibition that is going on in Milan, Italy this week will be characterized by amazing concept bikes, surprise new bike announcements, hundreds of vendors, test ride courses, on-site race events, live music and more. Sadly, the smaller Cycle World Show is lacking much of this and is instead more like an uber dealership where one can ogle the latest bikes, try on some of the more popular bits of gear and see some popular accessories like tires and exhausts. The show in Denver will often have some kind of stunt show, either trails demo or a freestyle MX crew, that is pretty much the extent of the entertainment.

On the positive side, most of the major manufacturers have a presence at the Cycle World show and this year it looks like Honda, Yamaha, Suzuki, Kawasaki, BMW, Ducati, Harley Davidson, Buell, Aprilia, Cagiva, Polaris/Victory, Star, Triumph and Ural will all have bikes on display. Sadly, the expo will once again lack participation from KTM…the fourth straight year that the Austrian company has stood up show goers.

Let me take a moment to pull out my soap box here. What the hell is KTM thinking? They are gaining market share in the US faster than any other motorcycle company. KTM has made a recent push to build a line of street bikes that they hope will be as popular as their off road models. The KTM Adventure has enjoyed strong sales in the US and they are launching new street bikes like the 950 Supermoto this year. KTM is competing directly with BMW, Triumph and Ducati for street bike sales in America. Surely only a small increase in bike sales would be all that is necessary to offset the relatively minor hit to their marketing budget that would be required to have a booth at the show. Then again, maybe its better they don’t show since then I’d have to bitch them out for not importing the 990 Super Duke.

Okay, back to the show. The bikes, gear and parts aren’t the only things going on at the show this weekend. They will again have the BOSS brothers and their Ball of Steel stunt show. Additionally, newly signed Yamaha racer Eric Bostrom will be at representing the Racing 2 Save Lives charity. There will also be a display of vintage bikes which is always a highlight of the show. Beyond that, though, the appeal drops off dramatically. The food court chow is both unappealing and expensive. Parking sucks. Oh, and there is a lot of stuff is packed into a relatively small display area so some of the walkways are more crowded than necessary.

So why am I going? Well, first of all my wife needs a new electric vest and I want to have her try on the electric jacket liner from Gerbing. Second, I want to pick up a Kilimanjaro Air Mesh jacket for my upcoming trip to Costa Rica. Third, I always enjoying seeing the new bikes in person and seeing them all in one place is more convenient that driving around to all the dealerships. Finally, well, $12 is much cheaper than a flight to Milan…

[image from my photo collection.]

A couple of weeks ago, I did a motorcycle show intro about the British NEC show. This was a follow-up to postings I’d done earlier about this Fall’s Paris and Tokyo motorcycle shows. Well, this coming week is the last and biggest of the major shows: The International Motorcycle Exhibition in Milan, Italy. Since this is the final of this year’s major expos expect any manufacturer that hasn’t already blown its marketing wad to unveil new products and interesting concept bikes this coming week. Since the Milan show is the granddaddy of all bike shows, at least in terms for floor space set up for exhibitors, it is more of a spectacle than any of the other shows.

Historically the Milan show, like the Munich and Paris shows, has been a biennial event but it’s popularity has grown to the point that it is now going to be held annually. Lets throw out a few numbers to show just how popular this thing really is. First, over 1,500 exhibitors are scheduled to be at the Milan Show. Think about that for a second…that kind of turn-out highlights just how incredible the motorcycle market is in Italy. Next up, the exhibition area is nearly 700,000 sq ft in size indoors and over 600,000 sq ft outside. In addition to the traditional booths and displays that will be set up inside the Nuova Fiera Milano convention center there will be a large number of activities happening in the outside space including freestyle motocross demos, supermotard and supercross races, trials performances, riding classes, motorcycle and scooter test drives and live concerts. Wow.

You know, reading the descriptions of what all happens at the NEC and Milan shows really brings to light how the Cycle World International Motorcycle Show is incredibly lame. If, somehow, the Cycle World show in Denver could be combined with the CycleFest held annually at Copper Mountain (with demo rides, supermoto racing, organized rides, etc) then it would be getting close to the scope of one of these major international shows. One can always dream that the US motorcycle market will eventually grow to the point where an American expo will be considered equal to a Paris, a NEC, a Tokyo or a Milan show. ‘Course, given the current grown in the US motorcycle market such a show would probably be made up primarily choppers anyway. Sigh.

…but I digress. Now where was I? Oh yes, talking about the Milan show. Well, the excitement has built continually all Fall as each of these major shows has revealed an increasing number of new bike announcements and radical prototypes unveillings. Thus Milan is bound to have a few surprises in store. The current rumors are:

First, MV Agusta will announce the new F4 Senna which is their Ayrton Senna replica but using the 1000cc F4 1000S instead of the earlier 750cc version. Likewise, MV Agusta should also show off their 910R Brutale naked bike. It is hard to beat a MV when it comes to a lustworthy and exclusive bike, so expect their showing to be the biggest news coming out of Milan.

Benelli, freshly returned from the dead thanks to a last minute infusion of money, are rumored to be showing two versions of their three cylinder Tornado sport bike and an updated version of their TNT naked bike. The Benelli triple was an innovative bike when it was first made a decade ago but their lingering financial problems have prevented development and the bikes are pretty dated now. They need to find about 20 hp and do a redesign to get the bikes up to modern spec.

Aprilia, also saved from bankruptcy after being purchased by Piaggio last year, is starting to show some movement. Their big news at Milan should be the overhauled RSV Mille sport bike, as well as updates to their European bread-n-butter two stroke sport bikes like the RS-125 and RS-250. I think the RSV Mille Factory is one of the prettiest sport bikes available so hopefully their updates have been aimed at keeping it competitive in a market where performance is improving year to year. I’m looking forward to seeing one of the new Milles when they finally make it to the states.

Bimota, yes yet another Italian motorcycle company that was out of money just twelve months ago but is now back in business. In this case, a consortium of Italians raised the money to start making Bimota motorcycles again. All the new Bimotas will use Ducati engines but very little is known about the new model they are expected to announce other than that the name will be the Delirio.

Ducati has already shown its new bikes but the Monster S4RS which uses the S4R frame but with the water cooled three valve motor from the Multistrada should be officially announced. Otherwise, not much excited from Ducati at their home expo.

The last of the Italian motorcycle companies rumored to be showing new product next week is the small manufacturer Moto Morini. This company is…wait for it…back from a bankruptcy induced dormancy that has lasted for the past decade. They have designed their own 1200cc V-Twin and are creating a line of bikes around this motor. The first was the Corsaro sport bike and now their follow-up, the 9.5 naked bike, should be unwrapped in Milan.

Naturally, the main players in the Italian scooter market like Piaggio (aka Vespa), Cagiva, Gilera, Aprilia will be showing new step throughs, as will Peugeot. The Japanese all pulled the cover off their scooters at the Tokyo show so its up to the Europeans to answer with their own prototypes and concept scooters.

But the Italians aren’t the only ones popping off some surprises in Milan. BMW is expected to announce some new models as a follow-up to their NEC show unveilings. First is a sport-touring version their newly announced 800cc parallel twin which will be called the F800ST. Keeping with the sporting trend they will roll out the R1200S sport bike and a K1200GT.

Finally, KTM is also bringing the big guns to Italy with two versions of their Adventure using the 990cc motor, a factory built enduro using the 950cc motor and probably showing off their 990cc sport bike prototype again. In my opinion, KTM has now completely overtaken Ducati as the most innovative and rapidly reacting motorcycle company in the market. Now if they could just get that big 990cc certified in the US so they could import all these cool bikes…

Alright, so I’m again jealous of the motorcycle treasures which are cascaded upon the heads of the European motorcycles. As if our government wasn’t enough of a reason for me to head across the pond now these shows are adding even more temptation. With the race season over, the silly season nearly settled and now the bike shows finishing up, it is starting to look like a long winter is ahead…

[image from the Beaudry Motorsports web site.]

With the echos of the thundering MotoGP bikes still echoing off the grandstands in Valencia from last weekend’s last race and the trophies still warm from the hands of the championship winners it was immediately time to roll up the shirt sleeves and start work for the 2006 season. On Monday, the day after the final race, much of the MotoGP paddock was back in action testing bike parts and new tires. The main reason for such a prompt turn around from racing to testing is because there are only three weeks before the mandatory test ban which starts in December.

As I mentioned last year, I think the test ban is particularly difficult on the smaller teams and that was true again this year as neither TeamKR nor WCM were in attendance this week. However, the big dogs of Honda, Yamaha, Kawasaki, Suzuki and Ducati were all present and accounted for as soon as the track was available.

The first order of business was giving the press a chance to sample the bikes. In the past only the top one or two bikes from a given year were handed over to the hoards of crazed journalists for a flogging but over the past three years it has become a tradition for nearly all the bikes to be ridden back-to-back in the same day by the scribes. Honda is the only standout as they prefer for their bike not to be directly compared to the other bikes so a separate press outing on the RC211V is always scheduled after the end of the season. For the other manufacturers their 2005 bikes are put through their paces by the pen pushers and then the smoking ruins which are left behind are hastily rebuilt so that proper testing for the factory teams can begin the next day.

In the past it was always the run of the mill press hacks which were set loose on the GP bikes but that has changed over the past few years as professional riders have been brought in by some magazines to test the bikes a little closer to their limits. The big names riding the bikes for the press this year were current 250GP racer Jakub Smrz and ex-500GP winner Luca Cadalora. Presumably the magazines running reports from these guys may actually contain accurate information about the bike’s performance and the feedback from these riders may actually be useful for the teams. A real win-win…

When the scribes were done it was time for the company big wigs to give out some complimentary rides as a year end bonus. For Honda, this mean handing the key to a RC211V over to 2005 125GP champion Thomas Luthi, 250GP rider Andrea Dovizioso who finished third this year and World Superbike rookie Max Neukirchner. All three were being rewarded for their hard work on Honda’s behalf this year but their test ride also shows that Honda is looking to them as possible future MotoGP racers. Meanwhile, Yamaha and Honda both looked to the past as well by offering rides on their bikes to past Grand Prix greats Giacomo Agostini and Fausto Gresini. Yamaha let 15 time World Champ Agostini out for a spin on Rossi’s M1 while Honda allowed Fortuna Honda manager Gresini take one of his teams’ bikes out for a few laps. (As an aside, a certifiable motorcycle racing geek like myself would give up a kidney to watch someone like Agostini or Gresini ride so this was really an pretty rare and amazing event. Anyone that got to watch it should consider themselves very lucky.)

Next up was the task of testing prospective riders for near season. This year a few of the second string teams were in a position to scope out new talent so a few racers suited up in an effort to earn a job. First up were ex-WCM rider James Ellison and ex-GP and current WSBK rider Jose Luis Cardoso who both went out on the D’Antin Ducati. It looks as if the D’Antin team will have access to near factory spec 2006 Desmosedici bikes and may also have the funding to run a two rider team next year. While it seems likely that Roby Rolfo will be one of the riders there may still be an open seat alongside him. Ellison would seem the more obvious choice of the two new testers, given is age and recent GP experience. However, Cardoso has a long history of racing with D’Antin and, like nearly any rider with a Spanish passport, probably brings wads of sponsorship bucks with him.

A less obvious try out was Kurtis Roberts who stuck around after racing his father’s bike last weekend to turn a few laps on the Suzuki GSV-R that was recently vacated by his older brother. It would seem that Suzuki is already full up for next season with Hopkins and Vermeulen on their bikes but appeared to be checking out Kurtis nonetheless. It seems unlikely that this test would progress to anything further with Suzuki but the experience on the V4 will probably be helpful if Kurtis races his father’s Honda powered Proton in ‘06.

Speaking of which, Kenny Roberts Jr was scheduled to test a Honda this week but his wrist injury from the Phillip Island crash prevented this. Like his bro’s test ride on the Suzi, having KRJr test a Honda probably wouldn’t have been for a ride (though there my still be a Pons seat available) but would likely have been arranged to give TeamKR’s prospective lead rider some time to get acquainted with the Honda motor. Too bad that KRJr was unable to make the ride and given Kurtis’ rocky relationship with Honda of late it wasn’t bloody likely that Big Red was going to let him try out the bike…

Finally, it was time to get down to the business of testing bikes. The most exciting part of this was getting a first glance at the riders who are new to the series or at least on a new team for next season. Unfortunately, the weather didn’t cooperate so relatively little testing was actually done over the three days available but each of the riders did get a little time aboard their new bikes.

Honda had a few fresh faces in the garage with two time 250GP title holder Dani Pedrosa making his debut on the Repsol Honda and ex-Yamaha rider Toni Elias throwing his leg over the Gresini Fortuna Honda. In the next garage over, ex-Ducati pilot Carlos Checa (unofficially the second Pons rider) and his new teamate 250GP runner up Casey Stoner were giving their now unsponsored Honda a run down. Checa went a little further by also testing the crash-worthiness of the bike on lap three of his inagural ride. Ouch! Just down the paddock row ex-Honda racer Sete Gibernau was able to get his first laps aboard the Marlboro Ducati. Finally, two MotoGP rookies were becoming acquainted with their slower bikes as WSBK runner-up Chris Vermeulen checked to see if the Suzuki is faster than his old Ten Kate Honda World Superbike and 250GP front runner Randy De Puniet stretched the Kawasaki’s throttle cables trying to keep his old rivals Stoner and Pedrosa in sight.

In addition to the newcomers, most of the old guard were back in action starting their serious testing for next year. MotoGP runner ups Marco Melandri and Nicky Hayden were both testing suspension, frame and tire improvements for Honda. Ducati brought out their test rider Vittoriano Guareschi to help sift through new parts for the Duc. Kawasaki test rider Olivier Jacque was doing the same testing of evolutionary changes to the ZX-RR. Under the Suzuki tent, both John Hopkins and test rider Nobuatsu Aoki were punching the clock to start their winter test program with the hopes of finding some more power for their bikes.

There were a few notable absentees, in addition to TeamKR and WCM. First and most interesting was World Champion Valentino Rossi who skipped out on the week of testing to go off and drive a Ferrari F1 car for a few days. Likewise, his teammate Colin Edwards was a no-show leaving Yamaha with no testing during this first window of opportunity. Kawasaki’s Shinya Nakano was scheduled to test but instead flew back to Japan to have the hand that was injured in his pre-race Valencia highside looked at by a doctor. Another Japanese disappearance was Monitron Konica Minolta’s Makoto Tamada who had apparently flown back to Japan after last weekend’s race.

In the end cold weather and rain washed out most of the three days of testing though a few determined riders like Nicky Hayden did venture out to test rain tires today. Many of the teams will be back in action over the next three weeks, most of them at Sepang this coming weekend, as they try to put new parts through their final paces before being integrated into the 2006 bikes. Laps times this early in the year are generally meaningless but as would be expected it was the two young Honda riders who topped the time sheets this week at Valencia. Of the class rookies, Casey Stoner was the fastest just a second or so off Hayden’s fastest times during the test. Of those testing or getting guest rides it looks like James Ellison was the fastest, just 1.5 seconds down on Hayden’s high water mark. In fact, of the times that were reported, the young racers were all clustered in a 10 second window with elders Agostini and Gresini another 10 or so seconds off the slowest times of the other riders. (Still for a 44 year old team owner like Gresini to turn in laps just 20 seconds off the fastest time of the test after having not ridden a bike in 10 years is pretty impressive stuff!).

This was just our first glimpse of the new teams, the new sponsors and the new riders. Expect their potential to shake out at the tests this month and then to really start to shine when they start testing the 2006 bikes early next year.

[image from the Official MotoGP web site.]

With the ‘05 MotoGP season finally over I have a lot of thoughts about the season that I’ll be posting over the next week. Here is one of them…

Nature is a fascinating thing. Millions of years of evolution have created an amazing amount of biological diversity. Plants, in particular, illuminate this spectacular variation. There is a ruthless war happening in the taxonomical landscape that is your back yard: insects, bacteria, UV rays and even other plants are making a constant assault on the flora and fauna. For its own defense the vegetation has adapted to these attacks with the full spectrum of biological weaponry. Some plants have thorns or spines, others secrete toxic chemicals, others hide or mimic other varieties and some others grow armour. Every species reacts differently but they all react. But this blog is about motorcycles not botany so what’s the point you might ask?

Well, there has been a ruthless assault taking place in the MotoGP paddock this year and the aggressor has been one Valentino Rossi. What has been intriguing to watch is how the other riders have developed their own unique defense mechanisms to protect their egos. Here is my take on a few of the racers and their strategies for protecting their self image.

First up is the most obvious example of a Rossi target: Honda’s Sete Gibernau. The history of the champs’ psychological barrage on the Spaniard has been well documented in the motorcycle press since it started at the 2004 Qatar GP. What hasn’t really been highlighted as been the public response from Sete. Reading back through the post race interviews with Gibernau this season I regularly hear the Honda rider talking about his races in the first person plural grammatical form. For example, he might say “We had some bad luck.". As my co-worker Jeff once said “We? What, does he race with a mouse in his pocket?” It seems to me like this is a pretty straight forward attempt to avoid taking personal responsibility for bad results. By talking about “we” rather than “I” there is an implication that the team was also to blame. In some cases this may be true but in others, like Gibernau’s tour of so many of the gravel traps at this season’s circuits, it is just case of outright rider mistakes.

The second rider to view the MotoGP Rorschach ink blot and see a menacing Vale is Honda’s Max Biaggi. The veteran Italian has been squarely in the sights of Rossi since 2000 when Valentino joined the premier class. Max has always struggled to develop an effective shield but his most common method of defense is to blame the bike. In fact, he was so adamant about problems with his RC211V this year that he has talked himself right out of a coveted Honda ride in 2006. One of the first rules of a motorcycle racer is to promote the company and that means when you win, it is because of the bike and when you lose, it is because of a mistake by the rider. Thus racers have to possess a particularly thick skin so they can take the blame for problems while still promoting the bike. Clearly Biaggi has fallen down in this regard. What’s more, he is complaining about what is probably the best bike in the world while he is the star rider for the best organized team in MotoGP and while he has one of the most experienced GP tuners as his adviser. Everyone else on the grid would love to have those kinds of bike issues. Nope, I think the truth is that Max failed to lead development of the 2005 RC211V in a positive direction and that is why he has struggled. The finger needs to point back at the rider. Sometimes the truth hurts…

Less clear is the case of Honda mounted youngster Marco Melandri. After a weak 2004 season on the Yamaha M1, the Italian moved to the Gresini Honda team this year. He quickly came of age as a MotoGP rider in 2005 and was a serious threat to Rossi as early in the season as Assen. The two Italians had been friends at the beginning of the season but that didn’t stop Rossi from leveling some strong criticism at Melandri as soon as he accomplished a confidence sapping defeat of the younger rider at the Dutch circuit. Melandri then went into a mid-season slump that was characterized by successive crashes at Laguna Seca and Donnington then two results outside the top five at Sachsenring and Brno. It was only after the accident and resulting injury in Japan that he regained his mojo and finished the season strong. What’s more, Melandri’s response to the mind games was to basically quit talking. His comments in Honda press releases were short and somewhat robotic. It is as if he was just trying to disappear off Rossi’s radar rather than submit himself to the whithering glare of his friend. Clearly Melandri has shaken off those concerns the last five races of the year and is now the strongest contender for the champ going into 2006. What’s more, he has also found a way to maintain his friendship with his rival, something Gibernau was unable to do in 2004.

Another rider with an interesting reaction to suddenly being considered a championship contender is Honda’s Nicky Hayden. The Kentucky Kid said early in his MotoGP career that he wasn’t intimidated by the GP regulars because he had grown up being schooled by AMA dirt track riders like Scotty Parker, Jay Springsteen and Chris Carr (not to mention in roadracing by the master Matt Mladin). Nonetheless, it seems that Hayden’s advancement as a MotoGP front runner took a definite side track in the middle of the 2004 season and then started out slow in 2005. Being beaten by Rossi can really rock a rider’s self-image and while Hayden rarely talks trash he does sometimes appear to defer to his ex-teammate in press releases. I think that for awhile Nicky honestly doubted whether he could beat the Italian superstar and it was only his competitive ride at Assen, followed by his break through win at Laguna, that finally erased those doubts. Perhaps Nicky has shrugged the doubt demon off his back and will start next year with his head eld high and his eye on the prize.

Finally, lets look at Rossi’s current teammate at Yamaha, Colin Edwards. It is bad enough to be racing during the reign of a dominant rider like Rossi without having the additional pressure of sharing a garage with the guy. If anyone can pull it off the laid back Texan could be the one. Nonetheless, I think even Edwards has wrestled with the psychological effects of being soundly beaten by Valentino while riding what is basically the same bike. The biggest outward sign of this is that Edwards basically abandoned his previous Superbike inspired form of riding that relies on squaring off corners for strong acceleration and has tried to re-develop a riding style more like that used by 250GP riders who rely on high mid-corner speed for a good lap time. I think that Colin, no matter how talented he may be, is groping for an answer as to why Rossi is winning while Edwards is fighting at the tail end of the top ten. This is especially baffling since the pre-season talk centered around how similar Edwards’ setup is to that used by Rossi. Same bike, same setup but different lap times. Ouch. To his credit at least the American has reacted by knuckling down to the hard task of becoming a better rider rather than just shrugging it off as a bike or team problem.

Alright, so I’m hardly an arm chair psychologist. Outside of a few classes in college (a *long* time ago) I have no training whatsoever in the study of the mind. What I am is a racing enthusiast and someone that listens when riders talk. Rossi is phenomenal and I think every rider has to find a way to protect their self-image when racing against the master. I don’t blame the riders, in fact I think it is a necessary form of mental self-preservation. However, I also think their are productive ways to respond and non-productive. What’s more, I think the results of these non-productive defense mechanisms can be plainly seen in the results turned in by Gibernau and Biaggi during the 2005 season while the more productive methods are reflected by the other rider’s clustering in the second through fourth places in the championship standings.

Perhaps in 2006 we’ll get a chance to see what Rossi’s defense mechanism will be if he finds himself being pressured for a change.

[image from the Max Biaggi web site.]

We would all like to think that MotoGP is all about the best riders on the best bikes and that those two factors alone would guide the sport.. Well, not so…

One of the big surprises for the ‘06 season is that with Sete Gibernau leaving Team Gresini Honda for Ducati and with rising Spanish superstar Dani Pedrosa being moved to the official factory Repsol Honda team Spanish company Telefonica Movistar is pulling their money out of MotoGP and heading to Formula One. Altadis, who is mad at Yamaha, is then moving their Fortuna brand (and the associated sponsorship bucks) to follow Spaniard Toni Elias in his move to the Gresini team as Marco Melandri’s teammate. This leads to the chicken and egg question of whether Fortuna is following Elias or whether Fortuna moved to Gresini and bringing Elias with them. In other words, who is calling the shots out there? The factory? The team owner? The sponsor? The rider?

The answer to those questions becomes even more clouded when you look further down the paddock. First, there is the whole Honda-Camel-Biaggi deal going on where Honda is upset with Biaggi because of some comments he made in the press and are refusing him a ride in 2006. Camel, a major personal sponsor of Mad Max, got involved and in a huff pulled their sponsorship of Sito Pons’ team. It is likely that if someone can find a seat for Max next year they will also get a big fat check from Camel in return. Who knows who will step up to stick their logo on the side of the Pons bike.

Then there is the Yamaha-Rossi-Altadis legal battle which really clouds the issue of exactly how important sponsorship is in the high dollar (or perhaps high Euro or high Yen) world of motorcycle racing. One would assume that Yamaha would want all the financial help they can get in order to offset the monsterous cost of Rossi’s salary (rumored to be somewhere north of $15 million for one year!). However, Rossi doesn’t want to run in Gauloises colors next year since that could complicate his hopes of testing Ferrari’s F1 car in 2006 (since Ferrari is sponsored by Marlboro). As a result, Yamaha plans to run Rossi with his own private sponsors and that has really pissed off Altadis, the owner of the Gauloises brand. A lot of lawyers have been seen walking in and out of the Yamaha HQ of late. Apparently money isn’t the only thing guiding policy in the Yamaha garages.

But back to the original issue which is Telefonica leaving MotoGP and being replaced by Fortuna as main sponsor of the Gresini Honda squad. This change up could end up being very important to Marco Melandri. Honda’s contract with major sponsor Repsol has for years stated that only the official factory Repsol bikes could get the latest development parts from HRC. This has always meant that the “best” Hondas were the Repsol Hondas and parts only trickled down to the other Honda teams after the mid-point of the season. Well, last year Movistar (a telecommunications giant) and Respol (a multi-national oil empire) started doing business together. As a result of that corporate intermingling it appears that Repsol was willing to loosen the contractual leash on HRC which allowed Sete Gibernau to have a “third” factory bike starting at the beginning of the year.

The assumption for ‘06 was that the good stuff would be given to Melandri who, along with Repsol rider Nicky Hayden, would develop the RC211V in ‘06. But now Movistar is no longer in the picture. While none of us, outside of a few Japanese lawyers, will ever really know what is or isn’t in the Repsol contract, it is possible that Gresini will not be eligiable for the fancy parts since Respol may not be obligated to share their HRC access with Fortuna. This could mean could shake up both Melandri and HRC’s plans.

However, sponsorship isn’t the be all, end all of the MotoGP story. Some teams, most notably Suzuki, have been running without any outside money for a few years. Then again, it seems like Suzuki could have a few extra pennies in their bank account to fund engine development so maybe they aren’t the best example. Two other teams, WCM and Kawasaki, have gotten by with relatively little additional funding. Then again, I suspect their rider salaries aren’t anywhere near the dosh being spilled out by Honda and Yamaha so again this may not tell us much.

It will be facinating to watch all these stories lines shake themselves out over the next few months. For now the only answer to any of these questions is that money is always going to be a major issue as the costs of competing in MotoGP continue to spiral.

[image from the Roadracing World & Motorcycle Technology web site.]

It is a well known saying that you shouldn’t wait till the last minute to do something. Well, that was the theme for this weekend’s MotoGP finale at the Valencia Circuit in Spain.

The first person to wait a little too long to take care of business was the 2006 MotoGP champ, Valentino Rossi. When qualifying got underway Rossi was one of the first to show he had the pace to win at Valencia. He was consistently running laps at the anticipated race pace and was turning in laps early in the session that indicated he had what it would take to start from the front row. This being particularly important at Valencia because passing is so difficult. Unfortunately, he waited until late in the session to put on his first Q tire and then had an uncharacteristic crash which destroyed his number one bike. Vale was uninjured but wasn’t able to get things together in time to improve his qualifying time. The result was an atrocious 15th place starting position which meant he would be lining up on the fifth row.

While Rossi waited too long, the Movistar Honda riders did everything right to end up with Gibernau on pole with a new lap record followed by his young teammate Melandri. Hayden finished out the session in third to create the second successive all Honda front row of this year. While Gibernau hasn’t done any winning this season he has put in exceptional qualifying performances at each round. This consistency was good enough to win him a new BMW M5 car because of a contest the German company was sponsoring to reward the best qualifier of the year. The second row of the grid was a mix of brands with Checa on the Duc, Biaggi on the Honda and Edwards on the Yamaha. Capirossi headed up row three with Barros separating him from Nakano…this being important because the two came together in practice which resulted in both crashing. Shinya was okay but then had a nasty highside later in the day which beat up his left hand pretty well. Loris is riding with tender lungs after his crash at Phillip Island but fortunately wasn’t further hurt in his crash.

Biaggi, perhaps not wanting Nakano, Capirossi and Hoffmann (who is still recovering from a broken foot) to feel bad, crashed his bike in the morning practice before the race and banged up his side. Clearly the Honda rider was waiting until the last minute to throw his RC211V into the kitty litter so he would have a better excuse for a poor ride than a mysterious front end chatter. However, his team put in a super human effort to get the A bike put back together before the race erasing that possible defense. Still, Mad Max’s accident meant three guys out the top 10 were riding with help from Dr. Costa.

Some 124,000 fans packed into the Valencia circuit to watch the last race of the 2005 season. Stop and let that sink in for a second as that is over twice the crowd that showed up on Sunday this year at Laguna Seca. Clearly, all eyes would be on Rossi to see what he would do with his fifteenth place starting position. Perhaps the crowd should have watched that all Honda front row instead, because all three riders got off to a great start. Then again, had the fan’s focus been slightly further back they would have seen Rolfo bump with Nakano in the first turn which resulted in the Ducati rider getting punted into the gravel.

Melandri decided not to delay punching the clock and instantly started throwing down lap record laps back-to-back. This opened up a small gap over his teammate Gibernau and Hayden who were holding down 2nd and 3rd. On lap four ominous smoke started pouring from the Spaniard’s motor and he pulled off with a frag’ed motor giving Hayden an open invitation to run down Melandri. While the intra-Honda scrap was going on Rossi was busy making the rest of the grid look like chumps by charging from 15th to 3rd in just four laps. Vale could basically pass anyone, anywhere.

Next came the laps of shame for some of the back markers as first Aoki pulled out with a mysterious electrical failure on the Suzuki. Then Kurtis Roberts wheeled the TeamKR V5 into the garage on lap 17. Finally, Ellison dropped out on the WCM. Lessee, if one considers WCM, TeamKR, D’Antin Ducati and Suzuki are all racing to not finish a race in last place then it seems clear that their 50% failure rate ruined their competition this weekend. (Battaini eventually earned the highly coveted “back of the pack” award when the racing was done for the day.)

Back at the sharp end of the pack, Hayden shadowed Melandri for the entire race. Rossi worked his way up to third pretty easily but by lap four he was six seconds down on the leading pair and was unable to close the gap once he had clear track ahead of him. At various times during the race both Melandri and Hayden turned in laps faster than Rossi’s best time for the day though on average Rossi was slightly quicker which meant he slowly whittled down the gap. Ultimately, the champ just didn’t have time to overcome the advantage he gifted to the two youngsters during those first four laps and crossed the line around two seconds behind the leaders.

With two laps to go and with the Kentucky Kid parked on his rear wheel Melandri uped the pace. Hayden was able to match the Italian’s speed and closed up again for a last lap pass. Unfortunately, Nicky left it too late to make his move. Melandri got the rear tire spinning on the entrance to the last left hand turn but that threw Hayden off as he was bearing down for a pass at the exit of the turn. Hayden hesitated for a moment to see whether he should go inside or outside and that was all it took for Marco to close the door. The American couldn’t go around the outside and didn’t get a good enough drive for a draft pass. Melandri won with Hayden second and Rossi third. Next came the Geritol brigade with Checa, Barros, Biaggi and Capirossi all in a parade across the stripe. Further back Edwards lead Tamada with Elias, Nakano, Kiyonari, Hopkins, Hofmann, Xaus and Battaini rounding out the finishers.

Clearly Melandri and Hayden both showed they have stepped up to become the new challengers for Rossi’s crown. It was too little, too late, in terms of stopping the juggernaut that was Rossi in 2005 but their performance at Valencia is bound to leave every MotoGP team chomping at the bit for the ‘06 season to get underway. Having the season end in such an exciting way is perhaps the best thing Dorna and the FIM could have hoped for in terms of keeping interest in the series going over the winter. Now the governing body just has to figure out how to manage costs so that they can keep the smaller players in the game for another year.

When the bean counters finished with the math Melandri earned second in the championship by 14 points over Hayden in third. Proving consistency beats race wins, fourth went to Edwards and fifth to Biaggi despite neither winning a race. Two time winner Capirossi held on to sixth despite missing races with his lung injury. Gibernau somehow got seventh despite spending a much time in the gravel traps as on the track. Barros may have won in Portugal but he could only manage eighth in the overall championship followed by Checa and Nakano to close out the top ten.

Elias got the rookie of the year award due to his 12th place overall but really there were no other rookies for competition except some wild card rides and the guys on the back-o-tha-pack gang.

Finally, there was a whole slew of of silly season news most of which centered around Honda. Gibernau confirmed his plans with Ducati which freed up a spot at Gresini Honda which was then taken by Toni Elias. Next Honda implied that they would not be resigning Biaggi for ‘06 because of some negative comments he made about Big Red in an interview. This suddenly opened the door for Casey Stoner to get a surprise offer to ride for Sito Pons. Biaggi’s dismissal ticked off Camel, Pons’ sponsor, who promptly yanked their considerable dollars away from the Honda team. (I suspect WCM, D’Antin, TeamKR, Suzuki and Kawasaki all burned up the speed dial on their cell phones calling Camel once that news leaked out!) Without someone holding the corporate money bags for next year, Pons then stalled on his offer to Carlos Checa who, coming full circle, was let go from Ducati to make room for Gibernau. Who will get the Pons seat? Biaggi? Checa? Barros? Either way, you can be sure the rider will be closer to an AARP membership than any of the other racers currently signed with Honda for next year.

Finally, TeamKR confirmed their plans to run a Honda motor in 2006 and hope to have a modified version of their frame available for winter testing by early December. They may find it cold when they do go testing because, as I mentioned in an earlier posting, Hell has undoubtedly frozen over if Roberts and Honda are working together.

The off season officially starts now with just four and a half months until the first green flag of the ‘06 season…but don’t wait till the last minute to start following the season as the first testing starts his week at Valencia.

[image from the Honda Racing web site.]

It is last act, last scene and the curtain fallin’ down on the 2005 MotoGP season. This weekend marks the final race of the year and it takes place in the fireworks capital of Spain. Its the Comunitat Valenciana Moto GP at the now traditional season finale at the historic Ricardo Tormo Circuit of Comunitat Valenciana. Expect the racing to be explosive as every rider tries to close out the season with a strong result. This is particularly true for Nicky Hayden and Marco Melandri who are both still trying to settle the issue of who will be runner up in the championship this year. The Italian holds an 8 point advantage but the door is still narrowly open for the Yank to pull this one out of the bag. Additionally, Gibernau and Rossi still have some things to resolve, particularly with Gibernau leaving Honda for Ducati next year. Given that the season started with the last lap, last turn bang-up at Jerez I wouldn’t be surprised to see the year book-ended with some more sparks flying between the two riders in Valencia. Rumor also has it that Biaggi may not be with Honda next year after he voiced strong questions about the quality bike he is getting. (This is particularly ironic since Honda dragged their feet earlier about offering Vermeulen a MotoGP ride under the assumption Biaggi and Checa would be riding for Sito Pons next year). This may have once again breathed life into the twitching corpse that has been Barros’ MotoGP career over the past three seasons…the guy is like a mummy always coming back from the brink. Likewise, Colin Edwards really needs to show Yamaha he deserves to be Rossi’s teammate next year so he better find that elusive “fast” gear on the M1. Nakano, Elias, Tamada are all locked up for next year and will probably resume their regular battle at the back half of the top ten. Nakano is held back by the bike but what about the other two?

Other riders hoping to impress this weekend are Kawasaki’s Alex Hoffman who is back after breaking his ankle at Motegi. He is without a ride in 2006 and will want to convince team bosses that he is worth a look. Checa seems to have locked up a Honda ride so he may return to his lackluster results until silly season of ‘06 cranks up. Capirossi is back from his Phillip Island injury but will probably be struggling with his health this weekend. Since he has a Duc contract signed and delivered for next season he can be forgiven if he turns in an usually bad performance. Hopkins is also signed for ‘06 but with riding the Suzuki he will always have lackluster results even if he turns in extraordinary displays of riding.

Yamaha hasn’t announced its’ plans for the satellite team next year so Xaus needs to show a flash of brilliance in front of the home crowd. Rolfo should be a shoe-in for D’Antin’s rumored two rider Ducati squad next seasaon but can’t afford to slack off less Ducati’s favored son Xaus steal his seat. Naturally the WCM guys are always hoping for a faster ride and Ellison may actually deserve one. If Dorna is still pressuring the MotoGP squads to hire an English rider then Ellison, along with ex-KTM rider Byrne, may actually be a hot commodity for ‘06.

The final group of riders hoping to impress this weekend are the wild card and replacement riders. Suzuki’s Nobuatsu Aoki is standing in for the injured Kenny Roberts, Jr. He has spent the past year as a test rider and would love to be back in the big show. Likewise, Kawasaki’s test rider Olivier Jacque will be a wild card this weekend and will hope for another China result (as opposed to another Sepang-like DNF) if he is going to raise any eyebrows. British Superbike superstar Ryuichi Kiyonari is standing in for the still-injured Bayliss (following the path blazed this season by Ukawa, Byrne and Vermeulen as Camel Honda stand-ins). He needs a top 10 finish to better Vermeulen’s results for Camel Honda and seems to be adapting well to the big MotoGP bikes. Finally, TeamKR are back in the paddock with their old V5 motor and their old 2003 rider Kurtis Roberts. The youngest Roberts is looking for a ride and the oldest Roberts is looking for sponsorship for next year. Both will be fighting an uphill battle for the weekend…

The racing circuit offers its own challenges. In some respects it is a mini-Motegi as it is primarily defined by a stop-and-start flow. The track is relatively short at 2.49 miles in length and is very tight since it crams 14 turns into that small space. The track is reasonably wide and has a very abrasive surface so stable, hard braking may be the trait most needed by the bikes with strong acceleration a close second. This is especially true in the first and final corners. Turn 1 is a 90 degree left taken in the mid-80 mph range but with eye-popping breaking after the riders have hit 180+ on the preceeding straight. Expect lots of late braking here which means bikes the bikes will be set up with super stiff front forks. The final turn is equally tricky since it is a relatively slow, off-camber hairpin left taken after flying through a sweeping left hand kink at 125+. Expect some riders to wash out the front end here and take a tour of the Valencia gravel traps on the outside of the turn. The final turn worth mentioning is the “where men are men” left hand kink at turn seven taken over a buck fifty. Lets see, fast left hand bends in turns 3, 7 and 13…who is it that likes fast left hand turns? Oh yeah, Nicky Hayden. Nicky has been fast in the past at the Spanish circuit but always seems to find the limit of front tire adhesion the bad way. Lets hope he can keep it on two wheels this time.

Alright, lots of hard braking. Lots of hard acceleration. A few fast left hand sweepers. An abrasive track surface. Sounds like tires may again be a factor. The Michelins have traditionally ruled at Valencia but Bridgestone made up some serious ground this season as evidenced by Capirossi and Checa’s podiums over the last five races. Keep a close eye on the tire war, especially because a strong Bridgestone performance could move perennial mid-pack guys like the Suzukis and Kawasakis up into the top five while a strong Michelin showing will increase the excitement of the Hayden-Melandri and Rossi-Gibernau issues.

The fuse gets lit this Sunday and should make for a grand finale for the MotoGP series.

[image from the Ricardo Tormo Circuit web site.]

So some interesting news filtered out onto the ‘net back in early October but I’ve been so busy with other things that I haven’t had time to give it any attention for a blog write-up. Now that race season is nearly over I am finding more time to go through my backlog of things that I’ve wanted to write about this summer.

So the big October news was that the Canadian Province of Nova Scotia has decided to host a road race in 2006. By “road race” I don’t mean an event on a race track but instead a good old fashioned race on real roads just like the Isle of Man TT, the North West 200, the Ulster GP and the Macau GP. The press release, done by Vibe Marketing (a Nova Scotia based marketing firm that sounds more like it should be selling “adult” products than promoting motorcycle races), announces an event called the Cape Breton Festival of Speed.

This event is being done in partnership with the body which has managed the Isle of Man TT for the past few years and should feature some of the big names of the TT like Ian Lougher who was involved in the press conference which announced the event. The track is still being laid out but is expected to take place on a 32 mile long loop near Sydney, Nova Scotia. This is near the Cabot Trail which is a famous scenic drive around Cape Breton and should thus be a beautiful area in which to race motorcycles. All in all, this sounds like a pretty good thing, right?

Well, yes but I do have a few concerns:

First is the safety issue. The Isle of Man TT is on very shaky ground after several high profile deaths in the past few years. With the 100th anniversary of the historic race just around the corner (in 2007) there is a ever increasing buzz that the TT will soon come to an end. Likewise, the Macau GP has a reputation that is not better than the TT, even if the safety record is slightly better. Classic road circuit races in Europe have been shutting down for the past decade and this trend looks to continue until only Ireland and the Isle of Man actually host the events. One thing this Cape Breton Festival of Speed has going for it will be its newness. With no prior history and thus no longstanding tradition to adhere to they may be able to lay out a route which is challenging to ride while still being safer than the existing loops like the Isle of Man circuit or the Macau layout.

My next concern is the weather. While Nova Scotia is warmed by the Gulf Stream and thus has different weather than may be initially pictured when considering its northern location I still think that the conditions could be unpredictable during the late September dates for which the event is scheduled. It will be hard enough to get sufficient crowds of people to make the trek to remote Canada for a motorcycle race without throwing in the risk of an ice storm cancelling the whole shebang.

Third is the condition of the roads. I’ve been going through a bunch of my old VCR tapes lately and in particular have found episodes of the Canadian Superbike series from over the past four years. One thing that seems to be a recurring theme is that the track surfaces at their purpose built race tracks is pretty bad. One race I watched at Mosport in Ontario showed the rear wheel of the bikes hammer up and down so bad I thought there was a bike problem but it turned out to just be bad pavement. As I can attest from our roads here in Colorado, extreme variation in seasonal temperature is just the thing for turning nice, new asphalt into a crumbling mass of gravel and dust. Frost heaves stretch the pavement in the winter, a boiling sun shrinks it in the summer. Road circuit racing is dangerous enough without having a surface more appropriate to adventure touring bikes than to race machines. They will have to pave this coming summer to be ready for a race in 2006 and then re-pave regularly to keep the roads in good condition. Does Nova Scotia really have that kind of tax money sitting around? Maybe they should turn it into a 32 mile long supermoto race!

Money…this leads me to my final concern. It is tough to generate a big enough crowd anywhere on this continent to support a motorcycle race. The MotoGP race at Laguna Seca this past summer was a massive success but the difference between the GP’s attendance and that of an AMA superbike race (or, worse yet, a Canadian Superbike race) is dramatic. For Cape Breton to support a huge event like they one they have planned will require a large influx of visitors in order to generate the necessary injection of money into the local economy. No local or provincial government will want to continually fund road improvements, staff costs and other budgetary items for a big motorcycle festival. I just don’t think motorcycle racing is popular enough in the Americas to support this event. There might be a critical mass around a major city like Toronto or Calgary but I don’t see it happening on a remote northern coast of a remote peninsula of Nova Scotia. I hope the people that are putting this thing together are made up of more business people than marketing people…

Alright, so I’m a cynic and a skeptic and a downer. Its not that I dislike races on public roads, or that I think Canadian race organizers are idiots or that I have some great insight into the economics of Nova Scotia. In fact, I love the idea of a 32 mile long street circuit, so long as they have safety has a primary concern when figuring out the track layout. I’m all about travel and would love to visit Nova Scotia, with or without a motorcycle race. For me, this sounds like a great thing. But then again, I am willing to do all kinds of silly things to watch a race since I’m obsessed. Its just that other people aren’t obsessed like me and the folks putting on the Cape Breton Festival of Speed can’t rely on a small population of moto-addicts to bouy their event. The Isle of Man TT has nearly 100 years of heritage, not to mention the entire population of Europe to draw from. This will be an uphill battle from the beginning. I hope to hear more over the next twelve months that will allay my fears.

Who knows, maybe I’ll be able to go join those crazy Cannucks next September to watch some road racing!

[image from the Nova Scotia’s Tourism web site.]

One thing I’ve generally avoided on this blog are posts which basically just bitch and moan about things I don’t like. There is enough negativity in the world without another self righteous blogger spewing bile on his web site. Nonetheless, there have been rare occasions when I use the blog to complain about something and I’m sorry to say that I’ll be doing that again today…

This past Tuesday SpeedTV televised shows which chronicled the two rounds of the FIM World Endurance Championship’s Master of Endurance mini-series. This series highlights the two most famous motorcycle endurance races in the world with the Bol D’Or at the Magny Cours Circuit and the 24 Hours of Le Mans at the Bugatti Le Mans Circuit.

So SpeedTV shows motorcycle racing and I find something to whine about, I can hear you thinking…what kind of ungrateful sourpuss am I? Well, its not the that they showed the endurance races that is the problem but instead the format of their footage. SpeedTV chose half hour episodes with which to cover the two races. These are 24 hour endurance races so that is a huge amount of content to be cutting down to a 30 minute show. Throw in 10 commercials and you only have 20 minutes of race coverage.

Now let me take a moment here to talk a bit about motorcycle endurance racing. Unlike the MotoGP, World Superbike and AMA races that I traditionally cover here on the blog endurance racing is a very different form of two wheeled competition. Sprint races are usually a little over 1/2 hour in length with a single racer on the bike and usually involves riding as fast as the person can go for the duration of the event. There are factors like tire life and race strategy when running with other racers but these are usually secondary to just squeezing every last bit of speed out of the bike.

Endurance racing, on the other hand, is as much a mathematical game as a contest of speed. It is a team sport rather than an individual effort so it is important to find racers who work well together, can all use roughly the same ergonomic configuration and can use the same chassis settings. When it comes to race strategy there is a long list of variables to be considered. How long should the rider’s stint be? A pit stop can take anywhere from 10 to 30 seconds depending on the equipment available and the components being changed. Longer stints mean fewer pit stops but that means tire life, gas loads and rider endurance must all be adjusted to compensate. Tires have to chosen…softer tires mean faster lap times but more time killing tire changes. Likewise, less fuel means faster laps but more frequent gas tops. Running hard means faster laps but puts more stress on engine and brake components have to last 24 hours or be changed during the race. It is also challenging to pick rider order: putting the fastest rider on first may mean jumping out to an early lead but then means you have to wait a few hours before you can put that rider back on the bike if you need to make up time against the competition. Even during the race there are hard decisions. Do you do longer pit stops and change tires, brakes, oil, filters each time or just splash in gas and run parts as long as possible. What do you do if you crash? Some duct tape and bailing wire can quickly fix up a bike but may mean slower lap times than taking longer to install new parts. If other teams crash then the race may be red flagged which gives everyone free time to make repairs and change tires. Do you risk running longer stints knowing that the time you save could be pointless if a red flag brings all the riders back to the pits. Decisions, decisions.

What I’m really trying to get at here is the fact that while a 22 lap road race may be cut down to a 40 minute TV show (with 20 minutes lost to commercials) without losing the gist of the event, trying to turn 24 hours of endurance racing into a 20 minute show is ridiculous and pointless. The guys at SpeedTV are predominantly car guys…specifically, they are NASCAR guys. These folks spend their days putting together shows about races that last two or three hours. Most of the NASCAR coverage on SpeedTV show the races full length but some of their enthusiast shows cover a race in a single one hour segment. These NASCAR guys wouldn’t dare think they could cover a NASCAR race, with all its pit strategy and race tactics, in just half an hour. Then how could they think they could cover a motorcycle race that is twelve times that long in such a short program?

Basically, the race coverage for both the Bol D’Or and the LeMans races was horrible. There was barely enough time to to show the start, a few laps of the race, some crashes, a few highlights and then a quick shot of the winners on the podium. No coverage of the various team’s race strategies, no play-by-play of the team’s pit stops and certainly no narrative of how the race progressed as crashes, mechanical problems, pit tractics and lap times separated the field.

I want to see more, not less, motorcycle racing coverage on SpeedTV but I have to say that the hour they devoted to the Master of Endurance series was wasted time. If they can fill hour after hour of their broadcast day with crap like “Texas Hardtails", “Build or Bust", “Kyle Petty Charity Ride” and “Corbin’s Ride On” then they can find the time to give better treatment to their coverage of endurance racing.

[image from the GMT 94 web site.]

The 1996 movie Jerry Maguire brought the job of sports management straight into the limelight. In the movie, Maguire strikes out on his own and banks his entire career on a single up-and-coming athlete. The movie fulfills its’ Hollywood script destiny when his client emerges as a superstar and catapults both of them into fame and fortune.

Well, I think that Norm Viano, aka the Lawdog, has achieved something this year that is as deserving of a movie screenplay as anything that Leigh Steinberg (the real life inspiration for the Jerry Maguire character) ever pulled off. Lawdog got both of the Bostrom brothers signed to rare factory contracts despite performances over the past two years that would have most riders begging for a privateer ride. Clearly Viano is a miracle worker when it comes to sports management.

Now let me say for a moment that I’m sorry to be so harsh when talking about the brothers Boz. I think both guys are talented racers and both bring excitement to the grid whenever they line up. I’m glad to see they will be in the AMA paddock in ‘06 and wish them both the best next year but I think a critical analysis of their 2005 seasons highlights just how amazing these recent signings really are:

First, there is the second return of Ben Bostrom to AMA Superbike. Bennie was off to Europe this past summer with dreams of redeeming himself after a disappointing season aboard a Ducati in 2002 followed by two unremarkable seasons in the AMA on a Honda. He signed on with the Renegade Honda team but was behind the eight ball from the beginning due to a lack of testing and a shortage of bike parts. I think everyone involved will admit that the season sucked for everyone involved. BBoz’s best finish was a sixth in race two at Valencia but he was only inside the top ten on four occasions (the 6th and three 10th place finishes). These tepid results were amplified by ten rounds in which which zero points were scored, including four DNFs, and also by two crashes resulting in significant injuries. The worst of these accidents occurred at Silverstone where Ben had a vicious highside which resulted in broken vertebra. This was a tough year to be in the Renegade pits. I don’t think anyone would point the finger at Ben and say the team’s struggles were his fault but nonetheless his record for the past few seasons had to make his manager’s job pretty difficult when finding him a new gig. This last week it was announced that Ben would be teaming with Neil Hodgson in the AMA Superbike series on the Ducati Austin bike. Clearly Viano has pulled the rabbit out of the hat with this signing!

The person leaving Ducati to free up that coveted factory ride is Ben’s brother Eric Bostrom. EBoz’s issue for the past couple of seasons as primarily been one of consistency rather than outright poor results. 2005 was a bipolar year for Eric. On one hand, he was the second winningest rider in the AMA Superbike class, behind champ Mat Mladin, with three victories. Bostrom won his traditional race at PPIR but then backed that up with convincing victories at both Laguna Seca and Mid-Ohio. There were glimpses there of the Eric of old when he was an animal aboard the Kawasaki ZX-7R. However, the other side of the story has been one of Eric struggling to come to grips with the handling of the Ducati. At nearly half the AMA Superbike races in 2005 Eric finished outside the top five. This in a year when only seven full factory riders were on the grid. Eric’s third place finish in the championship, along with his race wins, certainly looked good on paper but anyone who watched the season unfold knows just what a disappointing the year was for the younger Bostrom. Earlier this week Yamaha put out a press release confirming that Eric Bostrom would be riding their bikes in Superstock and Formula Xtreme in 2006. I’m sure Eric would rather be racing in Superbike but that fact that he has another factory ride is another minor miracle for the Lawdog.

I do hope that the two Bostrom brothers get their mojo back in 2006 as I think both provide a critical combination of talent and personality to the paddock. Both are past AMA champs (Ben with AMA Superbike, Supermoto and 600cc Dirt Track titles, Eric with AMA Supersport, Formula Xtreme, Supertwins and 883cc Dirt Track titles) and both riders have won AMA races in the past two years. In fact, I’ll even go so far as to admit that I’m a huge fan of Eric Bostrom and that I’m excited at the prospect of watching him back aboard a four cylinder machine. But until the two riders have an opportunity to step up their on-bike performance the real star of their team is the Lawdog who got his rider’s signed to contracts which I would have previously thought only possible in a cheesy Hollywood movie.

Good job Mr. Viano and good luck to your riders.

[image from the Eric Bostrom web site

As the race seasons come to a close I find more time to delve into interesting stories and thus fewer items to put in the monthly “Odds and Ends” postings. This may be the last one until the road race season cranks back up next year. Nonetheless, there a are a few things that happened in October that didn’t get the time they deserved so here is this month’s catch up.

First, with the major race seasons all coming to a close, Fall represents a small window of opportunity for big name racers to get out and show their stuff in other forms of racing:

Newly crowned World Superbike champion Troy Corser, along with Ex-Harley roadracer and seven time dirt track champ Chris Carr, headed to Mettet, Belgium this month to participate in the Trace Superbikers super-motard race. This race is split between a “pro” class with supermoto regulars and a “stars” class with special guests like Corser and Carr. It shows just how popular Super Motard racing is in Europe that a star-studded event like this can exist.

Just across the channel that same weekend a bunch of stars like World Superbike regular Pierfrancesco Chili, British Supermoto champ Christian Iddon and British Supersport rookie Craig Jones all showed up at Mallory Park in the UK for the Moto 1 event. This is a very cool cross-genre motorcycle challenge that involved separate trials, multi-vehicle “pentathlon", supermoto, motocross and roadrace events. Its a sign of just how popular motorcycle racing is in England that such an amazing event can get started. A further sign of that support is that it is sponsored by Dunlop and attended by many of the big national stars from the various national motorcycle racing series.

Even more exciting is that a “best of the best” event is coming to the US this year thanks to Red Bull. They are sponsoring the Last Man Standing competition which is a cross-discipline event to be held in Texas this November. This four stage event is set-up to run over a 40 mile enduro circuit. Nearly all the best National level Enduro, Trials, Cross-Country, Hare Scramble and Desert racers will be showing up. At the end of each stage, half the contestants are removed. The first two stages are run during the day, the second two at night (and in reverse). At the end of the final lap, a single rider will be crowned as the winner. This is a great idea and I hope that more events like it are spawned which may eventually bring in Motocross, Supercross, Roadrace and Supermoto riders. Kudos to Red Bull for again spending some of their corporate bankroll to promote motorcycle events.

Another end-of-the-season event which always draws an interesting list of participants is the annual Macau GP. This event challenges the Isle of Man’s reputation as the most dangerous motorcycle race in the world but has nonetheless been in existence for 52 years. The majority of the focus is on the car races but motorcycles also race around the 3.8 mile track that is laid out on city streets which are lined with armco. The names on the entry list read like a who’s who of real road racing: Michael Rutter, John McGuinness, Stuart Easton, Ian Lougher, Steve Plater and Adrian Archibald are all Isle of Man stars. Pere Riba is an ex-GP rider. Canadian (and ex-AMA Supersport champ) Steve Crevier is attending as are American roadracers Jeremy Toye and Mark Miller. The Macau GP has a long tradition and is an exciting event but a dangerous one as well. Best of luck to all those attending.

On rider who has had enough of danger is three time British Superbike champ (an ex-GP and ex-WSBK racer) John Reynolds. After enduring a season in the British Superbike series in which he suffered to horrible crashes with serious injuries he has decided to retire from the sport. The 2004 BSB champion started his title defense with a crash in the preseason that seriously damaged his leg. After healing up and re-joining the series at the halfway point he then had another crash which left him with multiple injuries including broken ribs, a punctured lung and a broken collarbone. Those old bones don’t mend as fast as they used to and Reynolds has thrown in the towel. He is a fantastic rider and can rest comfortably on his many laurels. He will long be remembered at race tracks around the world.

One road race track that won’t be around to remember any racers is Pikes Peak International Raceway which has been bought by ISC and permanently closed. ISC, who own many of the NASCAR tracks around the country, are slowly purchasing race tracks simply to shut them down and remove competition. I am definitely no fan of PPIR, in fact, I’m not particularly sad to see it go, but I must say that the method of it’s demise does leave a bad taste in my mouth. Hopefully, the new Miller Motorsports Park in Utah will be so impressive that all us Coloradans will soon forget PPIR ever existed.

While the AMA’s road race program is taking a hit their Supercross program is getting a huge shot in the arm. Hot on the heals of last month’s announcement that SpeedTV has signed up to broadcast the entire Supercross series comes news that CBS is set to co-televise six of the rounds. Having a major broadcast network on board is a huge coup and should help boost the popularity of Supercross even more. With the season set to open in just a little over a month and with all the major players healthy (Carmichael, Reed, Windham and Stewart) the series should be ready to capitalize on all this TV exposure.

Another bit of TV related news which ties back to the first item is the rumor that ESPN is working on creating a new supermoto series in the US for 2006. With the pr0 AMA Supermoto series slowly growing and the new amateur NASMOTO series taking off it is hard to tell if adding another series is going to help or hurt. What will help is getting some TV coverage of Supermoto racing on a major sports network like ESPN. (Then again, given that ESPN dropped their AMA Supercross coverage it seems that their interest in motorcycle racing is fickle at best.)

Something which has already benefited from TV time is the Long Way Round series which aired on Bravo last year. Now the US version of the DVD is finally being released and should be on shelves this December.

Well, I think that about does it for the month. The other major news as consisted of new bike announcements and silly season news but I’m covering those topics in other posts. This will be the last “Odds and Ends” posting for awhile. I hope you have enjoyed them.

[image from the Roadracer X web site.]

Last month I posted a write-up about a trip I am planning with some friends to go dual sport riding in Costa Rica this coming February. Since there aren’t any motorcycle races this weekend, it seems like an opportune time to post a little update.

First, one detail has changed. In my first posting I mentioned that we would be riding Suzuki DRs. Well, Todd spent a couple of weeks talking to motorcycle rental companies in Costa Rica and eventually settled on Wilhelm von Breymann’s Costa Rica Motorcycle Rental Company. We will be renting KTM 640LC4s from Wilhelm though I’m sure Todd momentarily considered the additional entertainment he would get watching me try to wrestle a 950 Adventure through the jungle before settling on the smaller bike. The KTM LC4 should be a great bike for our Costa Rica trip since it has enough power to make time when the roads will support it while still being small enough to explore trails off the beaten track.

With the books reserved, we booked the plane tickets through America West flying through Phoenix. This means that I’m only six hours from a hospital that will accept my medical insurance once we start the return trip.

The focus our our ride in Costa Rica will focus on two main areas. Exploring the Nicoya Peninsula while staying at a hotel in the town of Montezuma on the southern coast. Then we’ll relocate to the town of Puerto Jimenez where we will explore the Osa Peninsula. My guess as to our itinerary is:

- Saturday - Fly into Costa Rica, check into air port. Drink like fish to celebrate our arrival.

- Sunday - Wake up hungover and grumpy. Pick up KTMs. Ride north out of San Jose, do a big loop around Arenal volcano involving little known trails, dangerous animals, flaming lava and unfriendly natives. Turn south after going around the north shore of Lake Arenal. Ride to the southern tip of the Nicoya Peninsula arriving in Montezuma late at night exhausted, battered and pissed off. Drink like fish.

- Monday/Tuesday - either ride around the Nicoya Peninsula or sit in hammocks on the beach trying to recover from the broken bones earned during the first day of riding. Drink like fish.

- Wednesday - Ride back up the Nicoya Peninsula and then down the Pacific coast to the town of Porto Jimenez on the Osa Peninsula. Despite the seemingly easy day, I’m sure something will come up which will have us wading through chest deep water on a goat path that hasn’t been used this century and which will result in us arriving last at night exhausted, battered and pissed off. Drink like fish.

- Thursday/Friday - either ride around the Osa Peninsula or sit in hammocks on the beach trying to recover from the snake bites earned on Wednesday. Drink like fish.

- Saturday - Try to repair all the damage to the bikes so we don’t lose our damage deposit. Return to San Jose broke, exhausted, battered and pissed off. Drink like fish.

- Sunday - Fly back to the US, bragging about how everything went perfectly according to plan and it was the greatest time ever. Make plans do it again soon.

One thing I decided is that I need a good 3/4 length enduro jacket to bring on the trip. I need something with armor so that I can minimize the damage riders often get when riding with Todd but it also needs to flow air to deal with the tropical heat and have good rain protection in case the rainy season hits early next year. Based on the research I’ve done online I think the First Gear Kilimanjaro Air Mesh jacket is just the ticket. Now i need to find a local dealer that stocks the thing so that I can figure out which size works. If I can’t find one in the next few weeks, I’ll just wait till November 19th and see if any of the dealers at the Cycle World International Motorcycle Show have the jacket for sale.

As always, if anyone has any suggestions or opinions about gear or riding in Costa Rica please post a comment. I’ll post some more later once more of the plans for the trip have come together.

[image from the Wild Rider Costa Rica web site.]

A press release came out this week announcing that the Jordan Suzuki has signed rookie sensation Jake Holden to join 2005 riders Jason Pridmore and Steve Rapp. Holden will be riding a Superstock spec GSXR1000 in both the AMA Superstock and Superbike classes. This is a fantastic opportunity for the talented rider and another sign that Jordan is serious about winning championships in 2006.

However, one rider’s gain is always another rider’s loss and in this case it is Montez Stewart who will probably be short a chair when the music stops. Strictly looking at this from a results stand point, the folks at Jordan Suzuki undoubtedly made the right choice. Holden’s performance in 2005 was noteworthy as he finished sixth in Superstock and was nineteenth in Superbike. Jake ran some strong races that showed he has the talent and skill to run up front. Montez has continued to improve as a rider and put in respectable rides in Superstock but ultimately wasn’t able to generate the same results as his replacement.

Still, I’m sorry to see Tez lose this seat on the Jordan team. While having more skilled riders in the AMA series is always appreciated the other thing that is missing from the paddock is diversity. Whether its a case of gender or race, the one thing that is clearly obvious when walking through the Superbike pits is the fact that the sport is dominated by white males. Michael Jordan’s presence in the paddock has been a huge step forward in getting some exposure to a new audience and having Montez Stewart on his team has helped bring some much needed racial variation to the AMA ranks.

I’m sure that Stewart’s reason for racing is to improve as a rider, not necessarily to be a role model for minorities but I think he has been in the fortunate position of doing both. I think it is important for our sport to expand beyond its traditional audience and find new racers and new fans. Drag racing has successfully done this, in no small part because of the success of Ricky Gadsen. The same is becoming true of Supercross thanks to the performances to James “Bubba” Stewart. Finally, from what I’ve seen in the pits at the AMA races over the past two seasons there has been an explosion of new fans coming to the races primarily to see Michael Jordan and his rider Montez Stewart.

This past season saw a major shift with not only Tez on the grid but also the VeneMoto team which fielded two Venezuelan riders named Armando Ferrer and Victor Chirinos in the AMA series. Adding to the Latin influence in the pits, Hotbodies helped sponsor Mexican rider Dirk Sanchez. Finally, Kawasaki stepped up with support for Jessica Zalusky which added some much needed gender diversity to the field.

Thus it is a bit disappointing to see a little backsliding in this trend with Montez Stewart leaving the Jordan team. However, hope isn’t lost yet. There is still a chance that some other team will be the value in having Stewart…not just as a talented rider but also because of the message he can send that the AMA paddock is a place that welcomes racers no matter what their race.

[image from the Joe Rocket web site.]

Over the past month I’ve made announcements about both the Paris Motorcycle Show and the Tokyo Motorcycle Show. Well, this weekend it is time for the annual NEC Bike Show to open open its’ doors to the motorcycling public.

As I mentioned previously I thought the Paris expo was a bit of a disappointment. It was the public’s first chance to see the new bikes from the major manufacturers but because all of those bikes had been announced previously there really weren’t any surprises. I really expected the companies, particularly those in Europe, to use the biennial motorcycle spectacle in France as a showcase for unexpected new bike announcements and a parade of forward thinking concept vehicles. Instead, it was a rather mundane presentation of next year’s production bikes.

The Tokyo show, in dramatic contrast, was a panorama of Japanese imagination and innovation for the two largest Japanese motorcycle manufacturers: Honda and Yamaha. Because most of the two wheeled vehicles sold in Asia and Europe are scooters it was in that form that both companies showed their visions of tomorrow. Yamaha had a wide variety of new technology prototype step-throughs including hybrid gas/electric models, all-electric models and hydrogen fuel cell models. Honda also flexed their design muscle with a few cross-genre specials which were part traditional motorcycle and part next generation scooter. Even Suzuki joined the concept game with an in-line six cylinder motorcycle. Alright, now that was more like it.

So, this brings us to the NEC show… The doors open tomorrow and from what I can tell it looks like it will be an exciting week both for the visitors and to those of us looking for our first look at new models. While the bikes “shown” at the Paris show had been known about for at least a month there is one new bike that will be premiered in Birmingham in which photos were only leaked to the world this week: The BMW R1200GS Adventure. As with its predecessor, the R1150GSA, the new R1200GSA is a tweaking of the stock R1200GS to match the modifications most commonly done on the base model. The bike comes with aftermarket hard bags, a set of crash bars, a larger gas tank, longer suspension, improved lighting and a larger capacity alternator. All definite improvements over the base bike and accessories which 90% of GSes have installed after purchase. I was tempted to upgrade my R1150 to an R1200 and the announcement of the new Adventure model makes that temptation much stronger. This is a seriously nice bike.

I also expect Triumph to do something special at the NEC show since it is their home event. I believe the company has already announced all of their new models for 2006 but one can always hope they have been holding something in reserve to unveil to the English public. If they can’t premier a new bike they can at least provide more information on the fantastic looking Scrambler model which was announced a couple of months ago. That bike represents a very bold design statement by Triumph and I hope it pays off enough that they continue to look in new directions to provide exciting bikes that blend their modern technology with their unique motorcycling heritage.

Of the shows that have happened so far the NEC show seems to be the best organized. While all of these expos are designed primarily around generating a buzz for new bikes and building up customer loyalty for the manufacturers the organizers of the show in England have also realized the importance of turning this into a motorcycle extravaganza for the attendees. In addition to the normal booths where companies show their wares the UK exhibition center will also be providing activities including: A track designed for mini-motos. A class room where seminars on suspension, tires and bike maintenance will be presented three times a day. The usual demo area where custom, classic and show bikes will be on display. A track where riders can take classes on Supermoto bikes. An enduro track where riders can sample new model dirt bikes in their intended environment. An entire reproduction of the British Superbike Paddock including race bikes, team transporters and motorcycle racing celebrities. Finally, on the last day of the show, the final MotoGP race of the season will be shown live on a big screen and after the race the Eurosport announcers will do a special uplink to the NEC show to give their behind-the-scenes view of the season.

That is what a motorcycle show should be like! As if that isn’t enough, the NEC show is popular enough in England that various activities during the show are scheduled to be shown on BBC television and some of the presentations are being streamed live on the Internet. Wow, these people really know how to put on a bike show. Even if the number of new bike announcements ends up being confined to just the BMW Adventure the rest of the activities at the NEC already make it the best show of the season.

[image from the Adventure Rider web site.]

It must be getting a tad chilly down under these days, and I don’t mean in Australia. Honda just did a press release confirming they they are in discussions about supplying engines to Kenny Roberts’ MotoGP team for the 2006 season, assuming that Team KR can find the sponsorship necessary to lease the motors from Big Red. This is surprising for a few reasons…

First and foremost, is the fact that Honda and Kenny Roberts have never been on particularly friendly turns. Roberts made his reputation as a motorcycle racing demi-god by campaigning Yamahas. First against the might of Harley and Honda in American dirt track, then road racing against Honda, Kawasaki and Suzuki in the AMA Formula One and finally winning three consecutive 500 GP titles against Honda and Suzuki. Did you notice the name that was consistent across all those years of racing rivals? Additionally, Roberts has stated publicly for the past eight years that his aim for creating his TeamKR GP bikes was to best the major manufacturers in general and Honda in particular.

On the other side of the coin, Honda is a very traditional Japanese company where loyalty is the highest virtue. When a rider, a manager or a vendor breaks that bond then they are rarely ever invited back into the hallowed halls of Honda. Given Honda’s long history of working against Roberts, not to mention his long history of bad mouthing the Japanese firm, it seems strange from both sides that the two would come to an agreement to partner up in MotoGP.

From Robert’s perspective he may not have a choice. With KTM dissolving their partnership midway through the ‘05 season and with sponsorship money become harder and harder to find, I’m sure Team KR knows they can’t rejuvenate on their old V5 development program in order to build a competitive motor. As I said in a blog write-up this past February, building motors is the downfall of most small motorcycle producers and I’m sure many of the same roadblocks lie before a small race shop as well. The current Honda motor is among the best in the class and I’m sure they have a head start over everyone else in developing their 800cc engine. Having a competitive motor would allow the Roberts gang to cut costs and focus on handling which is where the TeamKR bikes have always excelled.

From Honda’s perspective I think that working with TeamKR, like their partnership with Moriwaki, would accomplish a few things. First, it would keep another team in the MotoGP championship which I’m sure is vitally important to both Honda and the FIM since a world series with only two or three manufacturers involved loses all of its legitimacy. Second, Honda has always promoted the idea of having strong involvement in the GP series by factory supported satellite teams. In the 90s, Honda created a lower cost (but only marginally competitive) 500cc V-twin specifically to provide to satellite teams that couldn’t afford the astronomical leasing costs of the four cylinder bikes. They have done the same in the 250cc class by retiring their NSR GP racer and instead using a more mundane RSW250 which is available to other teams (but using factory kit parts to bump up its performance for star riders like Dani Pedrosa). To that end, having another bike on the grid powered by a Honda motor would help fulfill their dream of moving MotoGP more in the direction of Formula One where companies build engines and teams build chassis.

Okay, so all that makes sense. What’s the rub? Well, if there was ever someone that is not a company mouthpiece it has gotta be King Kenny. That Honda would align themselves with someone that has been so blatantly critical of them for the past three decades is amazing. Additionally, look at the risks involved. If the Honda powered Roberts bike could actually be competitive it would be taking prestige away from Honda. After all, if the TeamKR bike wins then it implies the Honda chassis is flawed. If the bike, like the current Moriwaki project, can’t hang with the big boys then KR is probably the first person who will be critical of the partnership and/or the engine’s capabilities which isn’t going to do Honda’s marketing department any favors. Either way, there is definitely a lose-lose situation brewing.

Another person that will likely be hurt by his is Yamaha. While the relationship between Roberts and his former employer has been tenuous at best over the past few decades there has nevertheless been a continual effort by Yamaha to use Roberts’ successes in their marketing. Lets face it, Yamaha built their entire 50th Anniversary celebration at this year’s USGP around Robert’s GP victories in the early 80s. If Honda starts supplying motors to Kenny’s race team the facade of him bleeding yellow will certainly be broken. I’m not sure who will faint first at the sight of a Honda ad with Roberts in it, the marketing department at Yamaha or the fans who grew up watching bumblebee bikes dominating the AMA series in the 70s.

Don’t get me wrong, as I said when KTM stepped in with motors earlier this year I think it is fantastic to have Kenny Roberts involved in the sport. Not only does his involvement represent the best of the David versus Goliath situation, his personality harks back to a time before riders were hired as mouthpieces for sponsors rather than to win championships. The very issues that make a potential partnership with Honda so unlikely are the same reasons I want to see him in the paddock in ‘06. Still, no matter what the personalities and corporate cultures that are involved, the real trick will be for TeamKR to find the cash required to go racing with *any* motor, Honda or otherwise. Once they’ve overcome that hurdle then we can see if a V5 Honda appears in their chassis.

Once before on this blog I mentioned that Hell must be freezing over and that was when Mick Doohan was let go by Honda. With this latest rumor of a partnership between Roberts and HRC I’m sure the demons are buying ski gear in hades tonight!

[image from the Saro di Bartolo web site.]

The Internet rumor mill was churning for the past week with a series of reports about what HRC’s General Manager Tsutomu Ishii may or may not have said concerning Honda’s lead riders for 2006. The first report claimed that Ishii-san declared development of the final version of the RC211V would be put squarely upon the shoulders of Nicky Hayden and Marco Melandri. Then, a few days later, a story was released denying any such thing and saying development may yet fall to more experienced riders.

Well, after watching this weekend’s innaugural MotoGP race at the Istanbul Park Circuit in Turkey, I’d have to say Honda should have stuck to the initial story. Both Melandri and Hayden have looked spectacular at the past few races and both put on strong performances at Turkey to prove they have Valentino Rossi in their sights for next year. Besides, who else could Honda depend on for bike development next year? The Repsol team, which has always carried the standard for HRC, will be Hayden teamed with 250 star Dani Pedrosa. HRC will be looking to Pedrosa for leadership on the smaller 800cc bike in 2007 but surely they wouldn’t make him their lead rider in his first season in MotoGP. Likewise, Melandri will be joined by Toni Elias on the Gresini team. Elias has improved steadily in 2005 but won’t be ready to upstage his new teammate, especially if Melandri ends the season runner-up to Rossi this year. The Sito Pons team will be Max Biaggi and Carlos Checa. Both riders bring a lot of experience (and sponsorship cash) but based on their results this year it would be suicide to bank on them next year. Finally, Makoto Tamada will likely be back and while Honda always likes to back Japanese riders it would be a political nightmare to give him the development role while passing over faithful Honda teams like Pons or Gresini. I think the first release was correct but probably leaked out too soon (IE: before the contracts with Tamada, Checa and Elias have been inked). Whatever the official line may be right now, expect the eyes and ears of HRC’s engineers to be focused on Hayden and Melandri next year.

But at the start of this weekend all eyes were again on Sete Gibernau. Both Gresini Movistar Honda riders were fast from the first time bikes turned a wheel on the Turkish track and both set the pace in qualifying as well. However, it was the Spaniard who threw down the fastest lap once the sticky tires came out and thus would be starting from the pole position. With Gibernau’s string of crashes and mistakes over the course season the entire motorcycle racing world had to be wondering if Istanbul would finally be where Sete would turn things around.

Come race day though it was Melandri who was feeling his oats. From the time the lights went green he was on a mission. Melandri lead early but Gibernau made the pass for the lead within a few laps. However, on lap six Sete’s brain fade once again struck as the Spaniard took a tour of a Turkish gravel trap. This gifted the lead to Melandri with Hayden suddenly finding himself fighting for the lead after the Rossi curse struck Gibernau. Rossi, meanwhile, had a horrible start and was working his way past fellow Yamaha riders Colin Edwards and Toni Elias.

As few interesting things happened as the race progressed. First Shinichi Itoh, subbing for the injured Capirossi on the Ducati, was given the meatball flag for a jumped start but then failed to pull in for his penalty. He was eventually black flagged out of the race. Equally interesting, but for a more positive reason, was Chris Vermeulen who ran in the top 10 for most of the race ahead of both Makoto Tamada and Max Biaggi. He made a mistake late in the race which allowed the Japanese rider past but still stayed ahead of Biaggi till the end.

After Gibernau’s mistake on lap six the race turned into a bit of a procession. Rossi got around Hayden but seemed unable, or at least unwilling, to press the issue of the race win against his buddy Melandri. At one point Rossi turned in a record lap (later bested by Melandri on lap 17) and he repeatedly up’ed his pace whenever Hayden turned in a flier so it seemed the Italian was capable of running with Melandri. Nonetheless, all three riders ran for the final eight laps separated by a little over a second each with little change in the gap from lap to lap. Further back, Gibernau recovered from his side trip off the circuit to work back up through the field to a lonely fourth. Carlos Checa was equally alone in fifth, having gapped the chasing Yamahas but not really able to close the distance on the Honda ahead. Toni Elias turned in another impressive ride for a MotoGP rookie in this case nipping Colin Edwards at the line for sixth. Chris Vermeulen brought the Honda home in a credible 11th place.

Going into the last race of the season it looks like the battle for second place in the points has boiled down to Hayden chasing Melandri. The Kentucky Kid will have to pull 10 points on the Italian at the Valencia race in two weeks to claim the runner-up spot and that seems like a tall order given how well Marco is riding. Edwards still has a mathematical shot at second but in order for him to make up 25 points he would have to win the final race and have something bad happen to both Melandri and Hayden. Edwards could be overtaken for fouth by Biaggi since only eight points separate the two but given the Roman’s form of late that ’s not likely to happen. Gibernau needs to make up thirteen points on Mad Max to take fifth which is a distinct possibility if Biaggi has another round plagued by mysterious suspension problems and if Sete can stay out of the Spanish gravel traps.

Based on the races at Qater, Phillip Island and now at Istanbul, it seems clear that Honda does need to throw its development weight behind the youngsters. If anyone is going to beat Rossi in ‘06 it is most likely to be Melandri or Hayden. If not, and with Rossi looking likely to leave the sport in ‘07, then Melandri and Hayden will surely be the stars of the future. I have a lot of respect for the results that Biaggi has brought teams over the years (as well as respect for the sponsorship money Checa has brought those same teams) but these elder statesmen of the paddock should no longer be the leads for HRC’s R&D. Let them race for financial, political or even marketing reasons but its time for Honda to look to the future.

[image from the GPone web site.]

Yes, its true. I’m going to avoid the obvious Thanksgiving pun when describing this weekend’s inaugural MotoGP Istanbul event in Turkey. Since this is the first motorcycle event at the track it will be a new experience for crews, riders and fans. Other than some ideas about that track which riders may have gleaned while watching the F1 car races back in August all the racers will be starting with a clean slate.

The Istanbul Park Circuit is an interesting one having been designed by the same architect that sculpted the F1 tracks in Sepang and China. Best of all, he placed little odes to famous tracks around the world in his layout so riders will immediately have a little familiarity at certain places on the track. The builders weren’t stingy with the asphalt either as the track is 3.31 miles in length and 40 to 50 feet wide in places. It shows it’s non-European roots by bucking the continental trend and being run in the counter-clockwise direction. This means that left hand curves predominate (of the 14 turns 8 are left-handers). Since no one has yet ridden the track it is hard to predict how the track is going to work out but looking at the map and specs a few things seem to be likely.

First, like Sepang, the track should allow for plenty of passing. There are a wide variety of corners including some slow, tight turns that are proceeded by relatively straight fast sections. This is the norm for F1 tracks, since it is pretty much the only place the cars can make passes, but it makes for good bike racing as well. This is particularly true in three places: The 90 degree left hander after the start/finish straight, the tight left at teh bottom of a hill that is around the halfway point of the lap and, finally, the last corner on the track is a chicane with a downhill entrance and an exit leading onto the front straight. Like Phillip Island, these downhill braking zones will probably be a natural place for a rider to go for the inside line and pick up positions.

These corner descriptions bring up another interesting aspect of the track which is the elevation. The long track length, which includes four different “straights", and the constant elevation changes mean that the teams better bring their horsepower this weekend. That usually means the Ducatis and Hondas need to be watched since they always show up with extra ponies. Finally, the track width means that multiple lines can be used going into corners and that should help encourage more passing. Since passing is what makes watching a race so exciting that is definitely a good thing.

As I mentioned above, the circuit has a little of everything. Most of the corners flow together but there is a mix of rhythm sections, slow turns, fast bends and straights. Bike setup will be tricky since the front forks have to be stiff to deal with the two hard downhill breaking areas but will then be too hard for the two ultra fast right hand kinks (one exiting the first turn and the second in the middle of the back straight). The bikes need to be stable for the long straights and to deal with the acceleration/deceleration areas but that then means they will be a handful when transitioning side to side in the “s” sections. Riders will have to decide where they want to make their compromises and that means certain people will be fast in some sections and others fast in different parts of the track.

The tire situation will again be one to watch. Since this is a new track neither Michelin nor Bridgestone have any bike set-up information. Both tire companies supply F1 teams so it will be interesting to see which company has the best transfer of information between their cage and bike divisions. It will also be interesting to see just how conservative the two companies are with their selection of tires for the weekend. Since the track has a very fast layout, expect tire wear to be a concern all weekend long. We’ll have to see if either company gambles wrong when it comes to tire life.

Naturally, there is still a lot of interesting news in the paddock. Silly season is coming to a close but there are injuries, replacement riders and job hunters still to be mentioned. After last weekend’s Australian GP, Capirossi and Roberts Jr are nursing wounds and neither will make the show in Turkey. Likewise, Bayliss and Hoffman are still out and neither will likely re-appear on a MotoGP bike this season. Ducati is replacing Capirex with Bridgestone test rider and GP veteran Shinichi Itoh. Jacque is again filling in for Hoffman at Kawasaki and Honda superstar Vermeulen is still subbing for Bayliss. All three of these riders are hoping for GP rides next year though it sounds like their current rides will not be available. Itoh is rumored to be a possibility on the D’Antin Ducati squad, Vermeulen may or may not be heavily in talks with Suzuki and Jacque is begging for something better than another year as Kawasaki’s test rider.

The first question, as always, is whether anyone can beat Rossi. The only time he has really been bested all season was when he had to learn a new circuit at Laguna Seca. The Americans had ridden there before and their 1-2 finishes over Rossi were thus explained away as home field advantage. It will be interesting to see if anyone can win against The Doctor when the track is equally new to everyone. The layout should favor Hayden because of the left hand turns so expect him to be fast. Likewise, Melandri is mostly healed from his foot injury and has returned to his early season form with strong finishes at the past few races. Since he is fighting with Nicky for second overall in the championship Marco will be up front. Checa has also woken up here at the end of the year and will want to close out his career on the Ducati with strong finishes. Expect the Duc’s power to be very helpful when accelerating out of the slow corners in Turkey. Gibernau, who has gone backwards at the last few races, will want to close to his season with Honda with an upswing before trading bikes with Checa for next year.

Then there is Rossi. Ever time a track looks to suit the faster bikes the Italian wonder boy shows that his incredible talent trumps everything. I expect to see Rossi pull some amazing passes at the Istanbul circuit especially into the downhill tight turns. Rossi was given some push back at Phillip Island by the youngsters Hayden and Melandri. I doubt he’ll be able to break away from the faster Hondas in Turkey but expect him to rule the turns.

It should be an exciting race. Fortunately, SpeedTV is showing both the MotoGP and 250GP race this Sunday so I’ll be able to settle in for an afternoon of race watching. I hope you can do the same.

[image from the Istanbul MotoGP web site.]

For awhile I was doing regular postings based on mangled motorcycle parts I found in my Box of
Shame. Well, I’ve pretty much exhausted the stories about my mechanical screw-ups so that thread is on hold until I break something else. In the meantime, I thought I’d do a few write-ups about some of my riding buddies and our trips together. Today seems like an appropriate day to start this new series of postings since it has been exactly five years since one of my closest friends passed away. This inaugural post of my Riding buddies series then is as much memorial as it is celebration of our friendship and our shared passion for motorcycles.

I first met Mike Mitten when I was in college at Georgia Tech. He and I were both computer geeks and thus haunted the computer labs in the evening and weekends. We were also both pretty unhappy with our situations at the university, both feeling like we lacked freedom and were being run through their system like anonymous degree earning robots, so becoming friends was inevitable. We both pulled the rip cord at the same time during our junior years and opted to drop out and enter the “real world". We remained friends and met up regularly to eat, drink and trade stories. A few years later, while swapping drinks at an Irish Pub, we got to talking about motorcycles. It turned out we had both become interested in them over the years and we were both shopping for bikes. I eventually bought my old Honda CB400 and shortly thereafter Mike bought a Suzuki GS850.

At this point in time, Mike and I had known each other for about 7 years. However, it was the bikes that really fueled our friendship. By the time I moved to Colorado in ‘95, I’d ridden almost 50,000 miles on that old CB400 and on the GSXR1100 that followed it. Of those, probably half were ridden with Mike. In the three years we did rides together we covered much of Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Tennessee, South Carolina and North Carolina. We did trips up the Blue Ridge Parkway and halfway across the country to Colorado and New Mexico. We formed a small group of motorcyclist that met up on Tuesday nights at a cafe in Atlanta to talk bikes. We learned to ride together, became mechanics by working on each others bikes and even formed a staggeringly large group of mutual friends all through our common love of motorcycles.

Let me break for a moment and tell a little story about Mike’s first bike. After I bought my little Honda, Mike got the itch to buy a bike really bad. We’d been talking bikes for a few months so once I got one and was actually riding it pretty much sent Mike over the edge. He found an ad in the local paper from a guy selling an ‘82 Suzuki GS850GL that was described as being “used but running". I went with Mike to look at the bike and I must say I questioned even that optimistic of a description as soon as I saw the thing. The bike had clearly been crashed at high speed but a stout set of crash bars had borne the brunt of the accident. The bars were twisted, the front fender was bent, the turn signals and mirrors on one side were missing and there was a healthy dose of road rash on various parts. However, Mike’s desire to own a bike clearly gave him a case of rose colored glasses and he bought the thing straight away for $250. At the time, I would have sworn the bike wasn’t capable of leaving the Atlanta city limits. The bike needed a lot of work but in the end, that old GS covered about 40,000 miles. Mike rode it to Canada, halfway across the US, up and down the east coast, everywhere in the southeast and God only knows where else. It looked like crap from the day he bought it till the day he sold it but was probably the best $250 he ever spent…

Mike eventually bought a BMW R100GS/PD which was a fantastic upgrade from the old GS. He moved up north to New Jersey for awhile and rode the old Beemer all over New England. As I mentioned above, I moved to Colorado in ‘95 and although we didn’t get a chance to ride together after that we did keep in touch via email and visits.

In 1998, Mike was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. He spent over a year going through chemotherapy and was pronounced cancer-free in the summer of 2000. Unfortunately, Mike’s immune system had taken a hell of a beating from the chemo and he ended up catching a cold that September that progressed into serious pneumonia. In October the pneumonia took a turn for the worst and eventually took his life.

My plan is to write stories not just about my riding buddies but to also share some stories from our rides. However, in this case, I’ll just let this entry stand as it is. I know this is a downer for a series of blog entries that are supposed to be about celebrating motorcycles but hey the world isn’t always sunshine and fuzzy bunnies. Mike was someone who was passionate about life, he was a dedicated motorcyclist, he was a great friend and he was a damned fine guy. Its been five years and I still miss him. So is there a motorcycling message from this? Sure. You never know what life is going to throw at you so just get out there and ride.

…Oh, and enjoy the time you spend riding with your friends.

[image from my photo collection.]

Periodically this year I have done blog entries tracking the progress of American Nicky Wimbauer’s season in the World 600 Superstock series (which is a support class for the World Superbike series. Well, it has been a couple of weeks since the last World Superbike race of the season so it is time to give a final update on how Nicky did over the course of the season.

First, his ‘05 results:

Valencia - 8th
Monza - 23th
Silverstone - 13th
Misano - 12th
Brno - 14th
Brands Hatch - 6th
Assen - DNF (crash)
Lausitz - DNF (crash)
Imola - DNS (blown motor)
Magny-Cours - 14th

Final position in 2005 World 600 Superstock championship: 15th

Now I’m sure that fifteenth wasn’t what Nicky hoped for when he started the year but I think it is a quite respectible finish. This was his first full season racing at the world level which means he was going to have to learn the tracks, deal with all the difficulties of travel and fast track his skill improvements to be able to race at that level. He had the advantage of racing for the Moto 1 team which is a very professional privateer outfit running with factory support from Suzuki but the disadvantage of never having raced any of the European riders before while many of them had been racing against each other in their national series for years.

For a little perspective on that 15th place finish keep in mind that there were a total of 37 riders from 11 different countries who scored points during the ten rounds of the ‘05 season. Unlike the 600 Supersport series which has been dominated by Honda the past few years the level of parity among the bikes in 600 STK is amazing. All four of the Japanese manufacturers were represented in the top five positions of the 600 Superstock championship. The series was lead primarily by two riders: Italian Claudio Corti on a Yamaha and Frenchman Yoann Tiberio on a Honda. Only eight points separated the two riders at the end of the season, so it was a thrilling championship to watch.

…but back to the point of this article. Nicky Wimbauer went into the season with high hopes. In the end, I doubt he is happy with his performance but as a somewhat neutral outsider I think that he did well. He was consistent with top fifteen finishes in ever race were he wasn’t taken out by another rider or didn’t have mechanical problems. He learned all the tracks and was able to improve his lap times over the course of each weekend. He showed everyone that he was a responsible rider with talent and an desire to win.

With all that said, I think Nicky now has to focus on what to improve next. I’ll be the first to admit that luck plays a big part in racing but I also think a rider sometime has to made his own luck. Wimbauer, like Nicky Hayden during the first two years of his MotoGP career, has been struggling with qualifying. There is a huge amount of pressure when racing against the clock. The mental and physical effort required to turn a single fast lap during a qualifying sessions is intense. Still, three of Nicky’s DNFs have been because of first turn incidents where he has been taken out by another rider. If Nicky can improve his qualifying then he’ll be starting further up the grid and thus lessening the chance that a mistake by another rider is going to affect him. Getting knocked down by someone else’s crash is bad luck. Qualifying well enough that you aren’t there to get hit when a crash happens is making your own luck. Job one for next year is to improve in that regard.

It hasn’t been announced yet whether Nicky will have a ride with Moto 1 next year. If not, I hope that some team owner is willing to give him another shot in one of the world roadrace series. He has shown that he is willing to take on challenges head first and that he’s got the raw talent of a champion. I’m confident that he’ll be given another chance to show off those skills some more in ‘06.

Oh and in case you are just checking in, you can read my past postings about Nicky Wimbauer here:

December of ‘04 - pre-season preview

April of ‘05 - First race review

August of ‘05 - mid-season review

[image from the Nicky Wimbauer web site.]

Last month I did a long posting announcing the start of the biennial Paris Motorcycle Show. Well, I’ll have to say that based on the press releases I read and the reports on various web sites I was pretty disappointed with the show. There are two things that I depend on to buoy my sagging spirits as the riding season draws to a snowy close and race series one by one crown their champions for the year.

The first is silly season. That crazy time of the year when riders, sponsors, team managers, lawyers and journalists all converge in a feeding frenzy of rumors, second guesses and wild hunches. For a few short months, before the cold of the Colorado mountains freezes my brain cells together, my imagination can run free with thoughts of dream teams and undiscovered young talent.

The second are the new bike announcements that at first trickle and then flood from the various manufacturers as each tires to upstage the next with innovative ideas, bold styling, technological breakthroughs and the continual game of performance oneupsmanship. Retro chic, futuristic concepts, cross genre blending and narrowly focus designs all shine as everyone tries to find the next big thing.

So I place a lot of expectations on the shoulders of the bike manufacturers to really surprise me each year and that holds doubly true for something as big as the Paris Motorcycle Show. I mean, they only bother to crank the thing up every other year so surely it isn’t unrealistic to expect something earth shaking when they open the doors. Well, this year the motorcycle makers apparently decided not to play along. Most of the major new bike announcements, like those for the Kawasaki ZX-14R, the Yamaha R1LE, the Aprilia SVX and the Triumph Scrambler, were shown to the public in early September a few weeks before the first show off the year. A few new bikes were announced, like the very interesting Yamaha MT series of roadsters and the awesome custom KTM 990 SuperDuke RR but on the whole there were disappointingly few surprises to be found at the Paris show. Even the bike declared “Best in show", the BMW HP2, was a bike that was announced almost six months earlier. Its an interesting bike but it was old news by the time it hit the spotlight in France.

Well, ever the optimist, I’m now pinning my hopes of new bike excitement on this coming weekend’s Tokyo Motor Show. The Big Four have already announced most of their big production bikes but Honda and Yamaha always seem to pull something special out of their collective R&D hats when the Tokyo Motor Show rolls around. It is happening earlier this year than last and thus it gives the Japanese companies a chance to showcase their concept bikes on home soil rather than jumping the gun with a display at one of the European shows that historically have happened earlier in the year.

Scooters are huge in Japan and thus they will be the focus of most of the marketing buzz at the Tokyo show. Honda, intent on flipping that statement by putting a huge scooter in Japan is set to release the 900cc E4-01 scooter this weekend. Imagine putting a CBR motor into a scooter chassis! With the low center of gravity and long wheel base the thing could be a beast in acceleration. Yamaha has already leaked photos of a whole line of bizarre scooters including the hybrid powered bizarre Gen-Ryu that looks like something out of a 1950s sci-fi comic book. They also have a fuel cell scooter, an electric scooter and a two wheel drive scooter. See a trend here? But the pre-show news indicates that step-thrus won’t be the only cool bikes on display. Suzuki is supposedly going to show a production ready in-line six cylinder bike styled like an early 80s Katana. Talk about a bold statement!

Hopefully the news that comes out of Tokyo this weekend will entertain me in a way that the Paris show couldn’t quite manage. I’m all for controversial bikes…nothing gets the conversations going quite as fast as an ugly bike. It is a fascinating time of year and I love reading about it whether the bikes are making a fashion statement, a technology statement, a performance statement or just a strange statement. Viva la Tokyo!

[image from the Riding Sun web site.]

“No man is an Island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the Continent, a part of the main.”
– John Donne, Meditation XVII

That quote may be true in it’s context but there is one man that certain stands alone in the world of MotoGP and he’s quickly becoming permanently associated with an island. In this case the man is Valentino Rossi and that island is Phillip Island.

The weekend started off interestingly enough. As I mentioned in my preview on Friday both Loris Capirossi and Kenny Roberts Jr crashed their way out of the event in practice on Thursday. These wouldn’t be the only riders bitten by the high speed corners before the weekend was over.

Qualifying was typically thrilling. Carlos Checa, always a rider that seems to find his pace when contract time rolls around, was consistently fast. Max Biaggi and Sete Gibernau were also near the front for most of the session. However, when the clock started winding down it was Valentino Rossi and Nicky Hayden that set the pace. Both put in fast laps once the Q-tires came out but it was Hayden who ultimately did the business to win his third pole position of the season by setting a new lap records for the Phillip Island circuit. Rossi and Gibernau completed the front row with all three riders seperated by just 1/3 of a second.

At the other end of the grid, Franco Battaini on the WCM failed to make the 107% cut-off and thus wouldn’t normally line up for the race. For whatever reason the FIM waived the rule thus allowing him to race. I have two theories for this: First, Battaini is Italian and, coincidentally, so is most of the FIM board. I’ve bitched already this season about how Rossi wasn’t penalized after his Motegi accident when Spaniard Lorenzo was suspended for a similar accident in the 250GP class that same day. Naturally, I’m not surprised that an Italian rider is given a reprieve from the rules when it might otherwise mean he wouldn’t be riding. My second theory has to do with the depleted field caused by the absence Team Proton and then compounded by Capirossi and Roberts accidents. Surely the FIM knows that a grid of 18 bikes is bad for marketing and that losing one of those because of qualifying rules hurts even more. The FIM needs bikes on the grid to have a viable product to sell to the fans, especially with the World Superbike Series showing such strong growth this year. At this point the FIM needs everyone on a bike that they can get and thus can’t afford to disqualifying someone even if they can to compromise safety to do it. Bad juju either way.

Okay, I’ll move beyond the qualifying controversy… Once the race got under way it was Hayden who led the way off the line. The young rider from Kentucky looked confident perhaps because the track contains so many ultra fast left turns which may play to his past as a dirt tracker in America. One rider who didn’t have such a great start was Max Biaggi as the Italian crashed out about halfway through the first lap. Since Biaggi had been leading the battle for second in the points his early exit, along with Capirossi’s absence, threw the door wide open for Hayden, Melandri and Edwards to capitalize.

Almost immediately the race soon broke into small groups. The lead battle was Hayden, followed by Rossi and Melandri. Behind them, Gibernau, Edwards and Checa were locked in their own battle. Behind them came Barros, Tamada and Nakano. Rossi soon made his way to the front and brought Melandri with him. Despite showing speed in his pass on Hayden, Melandri was unable to go once Rossi had clear track in front of him and could cut fast laps. The American Repsol Honda rider, on the other hand, re-passed the Italian aboard Gresini Honda and re-closed the gap to the World Champ out front. The Yamaha rider tried his best to out pace the Honda but couldn’t shake the Kentucky Kid.

Further back, Olivier Jacque had another tough race on the Kawasaki this time pitting early with tire problems. It was announced this weekend that Jacque’s countryman Randy De Puniet will be riding the Kawasaki next year so it looks like Jacque may again be out of a job in the GP paddock. He needed some strong rides in these last wild card appearances to convince team bosses he’s got what it takes and it doesn’t look like that is going to happen. Another rider that needed a good result this weekend was Alex Barros. Unfortunately, the Brazilian threw his Honda down the track at the ultra fast Haystack corner and was lucky to survive the crash with only severe bruising. Still, a DNF wasn’t what he needed this weekend especially with rumors floating around the Carlos Checa was in talks with Sito Pons about a ride on the Camel Honda in ‘06.

Around half race distance Vale realized he couldn’t break the field and so he shifted tactics and slowed the pace. Nicky initially didn’t take the bait but with lap times two seconds a lap slower than those run by the trailing pair he eventually re-passed for the lead. However, the damage was already done. Melandri and Carlos had closed the gap and what had been a mano-a-mano struggle was now a four rider scrap. Once the gap was closed Rossi again went to the front and again dropped his lap times in an effort to break away. Meanwhile Hayden was fighting for position with Melandri and couldn’t immediately respond. It took two laps for Hayden to shrug of the pursuing riders but by then Rossi had built up a one second gap. Nicky took back a few tenths but there wasn’t enough time left to catch back up. Valentino managed the gap and won the race. Carlos used the power of the Ducati to pip Marco’s Honda at the line for third. Sete was a lonely fifth, followed by an equally lonely Colin in sixth.

Valentino Rossi’s win accomplished two things. First, it marks the Italian’s 11th win of the season. This ties his previous best record for single season victories. It also puts him just one race away from equalling Doohan’s all-time record of twelve race wins in one year of GP racing. With two races left this season, Rossi still has a chance to break that record if he can sweep both of them. The second thing accomplished by his victory was locking up Manufacturer’s Title for Yamaha. This gives Rossi a perfect trifecta for the year having won the Rider’s Championship, the Team Championship and the Manufacturer’s Championship for ‘05.

Hayden’s second place moves him into a tie with Marco Melandri for second in the championship. Edward’s sixth place finish moves him to fourth overall eight points behind the two Honda riders. Biaggi falls to sixth a further three points behind Edwards and Capirossi slips to sixth eleven points behind Biaggi. With 50 points still available in the final two races, the season runner-up is still a long way from being decided but it is quickly narrowing down to a Hayden, Melandri and Edwards contest.

…but out front Rossi is still an island unto himself.

[image from the Motocourse web site.]

Australia is a place with a reputation. It is a place where the rugged individual shines, a place with a harsh landscape that doesn’t coddle the weak and a place where men are men. Down under you entertain yourself by spending weeks on a walkabout in the desert, wrestling with a crocodile and ordering beers the size of buckets. Macho behavior is the norm and bravery is a prized virtue. Its not surprising then that when it comes to road race circuits Australia boasts a track which is not for the weak of stomach.

This weekend the MotoGP crowd shows up at the incredible Phillip Island circuit. The first sign that this isn’t your average race track is the fact that it’s located on a small island off the southern coast of Australia. The nearest major city is Melbourne but the track itself, as the name would suggest, is on Phillip Island. By being on an island, the weather can be downright tropical one minute and then blasted with gale force winds or drenched with torrential rain the next. If the riders aren’t busy fighting the conditions they are probably dodging the sea gulls. Did I mention already that riders who like the comfortable life aren’t welcome here? However, those challenges are offset by the circuit itself. Most tracks built for MotoGP are amazing venues but this track tops them all. Not only is the 2.763 mile long track one of the best designs of any track in the world it also offers a stunning back drop with the Bass Strait just a few hundred yards from the race track. On TV, the views of bikes cresting the hill at Lukey Heights is enough to make any roadrace fan want to buy a plane ticket on the spot.

The track is simply amazing. Technically, it is listed as 12 turns (8 lefts and 4 rights) but in reality is more like a roller coaster. There are two slow right turns (Honda and MG corners) but everything else is just one high speed lean after the other. Three of the turns are taken in third gear at around ninety miles an hour but it is the turns of Doohan Corner, The Hayshed and Turn 12 that really make this an Aussie style track. All three are taken in fourth gear with the bikes going around 120 mph. Then, as if that wasn’t fast enough, the long Gardner Straight has the bikes nearing 200 mph. Since Doohan corner comes immediately after this top speed run it means the bikes are scrubbing off around 80 mph and then sliding the bike through the right hander at a buck twenty. While the bike is still scrubbing off speed the riders have to transition from one side to the next for the Southern Loop left hander which is taken in third gear at around 80mph. The faint of heart need not apply at this track.

Because of the incredibly high average speed and because the slowest spots on the track are still above 50mph the bikes have to be set up soft. No need to stiffen up the front forks for hard breaking instead keep the bike a little loose so the riders have the feel they need while banked over in the Hayshed. With ultra fast left turns dominating the track the tires are crucial. Bridgestone and Michelin have been going at each other in the past few races so it will be interesting to see which tire brand has the advantage on the Island. Keep a close eye on the bikes as they accelerate through Turn 12 and onto the front straight as that will be the first place shagged tires start to show themselves.

When it comes to the riders a few things have already sorted themselves out. During the first practice session on Thursday two riders had sickening violent accidents. First, Kenny Roberts Jr was high-sided off his Suzuki at 180mph at the end of the Gardiner Straight. The resulting rag doll routine through the gravel trap resulted in a broken left wrist. Since Roberts is still unsigned for ‘06 and since this injury will probably take him out for the rest of the season this is particularly tragic for the ex-world champion. It will be doubly so if it rains on Sunday. The second accident was nearly identical as Loris Capirossi was ejected from his Ducati at the same spot and at the same speed. At first the Italian seemed uninjured but Thursday night started feeling some chest pain and was brought to the hospital for tests. It was found that he had badly bruised his lungs and was bleeding internally. He’s been in the med shack ever since. He is out for the Aussie race and probably for Turkey as well. Capirossi was in the amazing battle that has been raging for second place in the championship and given the momentum he has had after his Motegi and Sepang victories he looked good to win that runner-up spot. His crash not only hurts Ducatim but also hurts Bridgestone since he was probably their best hope for a win as well.

Bayliss is out for the rest of the season with his broken wrists and with the recent announcement that he’ll be racing for Ducati in World Superbike in ‘06 he won’t be seen anywhere near the Camel Honda garages for the remainder of the season. One Australian’s loss is another’s gain as Chris Vermeulen makes his MotoGP debut while subbing for Bayliss. All the young WSBK star has to do is stay upright, run mid-pack and show he can cope with 250hp. If he can pull that off, he’s pretty much assured a Honda MotoGP ride next year. Hoffman is still of the Kawasaki due to injury but is again being replaced by Olivier Jacque. After the Frenchmen’s visit to the hospital in Doha from his practice crash I think he probably has the same goals as Vermeulen…stay upright and finish the race. Melandri is still recovering from his foot injury but given his fifth and second place finishes since Japan it doesn’t seem to be an issue. Expect him to run up front.

Of those not on the injured list Rossi again tops the list of riders to mention. He pulled a seemingly impossible move last year to win the race. Phillip Island is perfect for the agile Yamaha as the transition from side to side at high speed is where the bike really shines. Like Mugello, the M1 may get beaten down the straight by the Hondas and Ducatis but expect Rossi to own the first and second turns. Perhaps the second rider to watch is Nicky Hayden. He’s always done well at the Island, including a third in ‘03, and is coming off a podium at the previous race. As has been said before, the Honda rider needs momentum and he started that in Qater. Biaggi needs a good race to bounce back from his disastrous weekend at the Losail circuit. He’s also still looking for a job so needs to put in that little bit extra. Capirossi being out takes some pressure off the Roman but the gap he has over Melandri, Edwards and Hayden for second overall is still only seven points. Speaking of which, all three of those riders were faster than Biaggi in the opening practice so keep an eye on them… As much as I hesitate to say it, another rider with a history of strong finishes in Australia is Sete Gibernau. The only momentum the Spaniard has had recently is with making mistakes so he could desperately use a little Phillip Island magic to rejuvenate his confidence. Finally, there are the guys that always seem to pull something out of the hat at the end of each season in an effort to get a ride. GP veterans Barros and Checa were both fast in the early practice and both are desperate to get offers for ‘06. They may show a little extra Aussie-like manliness on Sunday if it will help impress the team bosses.

SpeedTV is showing the MotoGP race at 9am (MDT) on Sunday but sadly are delaying coverage of the 250s until Tuesday. Its bad enough that they have been delaying World Superbike and AMA but now MotoGP? Speed, I thought you were our friend? Et tu, Brute? What do you guys expect me to go on Sunday afternoon, go on walkabout?

[image from the Australian Motorcycle GP web site.]

Word leaked out of the Team Kenny Roberts Proton camp this week that they are going to be testing their old 2004 V5 in a couple of weeks to see if it can be made race ready for the season ending MotoGP race at Valencia on November 6th. This isn’t really a surprise because Team KR said just before the Japanese GP that they would be skipping the fly away races and were hoping to come back for the last race of the year. What is surprising is that the rider tipped to be sitting on the bike at this test is Kurtis Roberts.

Alright, so why am I surprised at that you must be thinking. Now I’m plainly aware that Kurtis is the son of Team KR owner Kenny Roberts and I’m also aware that Kurtis is currently without a ride for ‘06. What strikes me as at least a little bit odd about this situation is that despite Robert, Sr calling the shots over in the Proton garage the MotoGP world is still a viciously political place. Take the following into consideration:

In 2004 Kurtis raced the Proton V5 for dear old pops. That season, by everyone’s account, was a disaster. The bike lacked power, the engine was unreliable, the Dunlop tires were crap and Kurtis spent nearly as much time crashing as racing. At the end of the year Kurtis was pretty liberal with the press with his view of the state of the bike and opined on a few occasions that he felt he’d been mislead by the team at the beginning of the season as to the competitiveness of the bike. This sort of verbal spewage is the norm for Kurtis, and for that matter for his father, so no surprise there. The youngest son of King Kenny split not only with the Team KR crew but also with his management company and returned to the US to race Superbikes for Erion Honda in ‘05.

While I’m sure the paternal bond between KennyR and KurtisR was strong enough to smooth over that bump in the familial road it probably still stuck in the craw of some of the management and crew back at the offices in Banbury. I suspect that when Kenny casually walked into the place and mentioned that he was inviting his son to test the bike in a couple of weeks more than a few people were gritting their teeth and mumbling behind their hands. (If the bike grenades in the first test session and sends Kurtis flying into a gravel trap I’m guessing it won’t be from an actual mechanical failure). Basically, it shows both how thick the blood in the Roberts clan is and how much control Robert Senior wields over his shop that a rider who was blatantly critical of their bike can get invited back into the team after less than a year.

The second reason I’m surprised by this is what Kurtis himself could be risking. When Kurtis returned to the US for ‘05 aboard a Honda Superbike it seemed he was returning to his destiny after a short international vacation in MotoGP. While I’ve never been happy about his attitude I’ve also never questioned his talent and at least from that perspective was glad to see him back in this country. Kurtis left the AMA series immediately after winning two Superbike races and looked for a short time there like he could be the one to challenge the dominance of Mat Mladin. In ‘04, the Honda CBR Superbike was a potent weapon and it was Superbike rookie Jake Zemke that took the fight to the Yoshimura Suzuki rider that year. By the time Kurtis returned to a place aboard a Honda Superbike the landscape had shifted significantly. American Honda brought their superbike development effort in house and the three riders (Zemke, Duhamel and Roberts) were given the task of turning the CBR into a contender. That never really happened throughout the season and the Erion squad suffered the worst in this new role since they lacked the resources of American Honda. Rather than fighting for the wins Kurtis was usually struggling to break the top ten.

Giving a remarkable rider uncompetitive hardware is bad enough but giving the vocal Roberts a pile is just asking for trouble. Roberts did what he does best…he bitched and moaned about the bike to the press at every opportunity. While Team KR may be forgiving of harsh criticism, Honda has never been known to have that particular trait. Someone probably pointed this out to Roberts because he toned down the negative comments considerably after the mid-point of the season. I don’t know if Kurtis has already been shown the door at Big Red since it doesn’t appear there is a ride available there next year but I’m sure that riding for one of their rivals (no matter how uncompetitive the bike may be) at the last race of the MotoGP season isn’t going to do him any favors in the land of sushi. Maybe the Proton test is just a sign that he has not other options left open to him for next season.

Alright, so I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. The youngest Roberts kid is a great rider. He should be on a competitive bike at least in the AMA series if not in an international one. However, he also needs to prove he deserves it. That isn’t just by being fast or winning a few races but by putting away his truck load of pride and getting down to the task of riding whatever he’s given. If he can get a gig in ‘06 riding his Pappy’s Proton, he should take it. Developing the original two-smoke Proton is how his older brother earned the Suzuki ride that eventually took him to a championship. If Kurtis gets invited back under a Honda tent in ‘07 he better show up with a smile and ask what he can do to help build the bike into something that can run at the front even if that means testing forks springs for weeks on end or riding around in 12th place for every race. And primarily, no matter where he ends up, he better learn to zip it. This just means he’ll have to work doubly hard because, as we all know, *that* skill doesn’t run in the bloodline.

[image from the Team KR web site.]

Last weekend at the Magny Cours circuit in France the books were closed on the 2005 World Superbike season. I’ll do a full season review soon but here is my race review.

First of all, while this was the end of the season it was the start of better things for at least two riders: Chris Vermeulen and Lorenzo Lanzi.

Race 1: the Chris Vermeulen story. With rain at Imola ending any chance that the Australian had of bringing the World Superbike title to Honda this year the only thing left for the youngster to do was to win races. With the news out that Chris would be racing the last three MotoGP rounds in place of the injured Troy Bayliss it wasn’t really like he needed to impress anyone but that was clearly his goal at Magny Cours. Vermeulen absolutely destroyed all comers in Superpole to turn in a time nearly half a second faster than anyone else. When race time rolled around he did a repeat of that crushing performance. When the light went green in race one he simply checked out on everyone else. Suzuki mounted Kagayama ran fast enough trying to catch the Ten Kate Honda that he pulled away from the battle for third but was never a threat to Vermeulen out front. Therefore the focus of the race shifted back to a stellar fight between Toseland and Muggeridge. For the Ducati mounted Englishman it was an effort to convince the Italian company that he should be on their payroll in ‘06. For the Honda mounted Aussie, it was simply a chance to show everyone he is as talented as his spotlight grabbing teammate. Both proved their points but it was Toseland that made the last of the close passes shared by the two riders but even then the final outcome wasn’t clear until the last corner. Corser brought his Suzuki home in fifth, not exactly what he was looking for after claiming at Imola that he would win again at the final round to prove his championship wasn’t a fluke.

Race 2: the Lorenzo Lanzi story: In qualifying before the race, it was the up and coming Ducati star Lanzi who had been the fastest man on the circuit. He couldn’t quite match that performance in superpole but still found himself second on the grid. In race one, Lanzi had tire problems which held him back for an eventual ninth place finish. Race number two is actually two stories. The first, which only lasted to the first corner, is less about any particular rider and more about how dangerous motorcycle racing can be. When the lights went green the entire field stormed into turn one at around 90 miles per hour in third gear. Muggeridge had some sort of problem which sent him careening into the back of Pitt. This started a chain reaction that also took down Bussei, Martin and the French wildcard Da Costa. Muggeridge and Bussei were both transported with injuries. Pitt and Da Costa limped back to their pits and their backup bikes for the restart. Martin didn’t have a spare Foggy bike and was thus done for the day. The story of the second start was all Lanzi. In order to make up for his heartbreaking result in the first race, after building such high hopes in qualifying, Lanzi came out for the race two restart on a mission. Vermeulen got the holeshot at the light and actually pulled nearly a second gap over the rest of the field. Lanzi, however, was not to be denied. He used his factory Ducati motor loaned to his Caracchi team to its full potential and turned in a new lap record to close the gap back down. Lanzi’s speed also allowed him to pull away from the trailing scrap between Kagayama and Haga. They, in turn, pulled a gap over an equally fierce fight between Brits Toseland and Walker. After Lanzi closed the gap up front he seemed content to follow Vermeulen and look for a chance to strike near the end of the race. That opportunity was gifted to the Italian sooner than expected when the lead Honda’s chain jumped the sprocket on lap 18 and ended Vermeulen’s day. Lanzi, who now had a huge lead, maintained his pace and took his second win of the season. As the race wore on, Yagayama was able to break Haga to end the most spectacular tussle on the track and thus to secure a second place result. Haga held on for the final podium spot in third. ‘05 Superbike title holder Corser found some late race speed to pass the two Englishmen and nab a fourth place finish. The intra-country competition between Toseland and Walker was eventually won by the injured Kawasaki rider despite a spirited defense by the Ducati mounted ex-champ. Walker deserves that fifth place more than anyone given the amazing ride he put in despite still recovering from a broken elbow.

So it is the end of the year for Superbikes. As I said at the start of this article this weekend also marked two beginnings. For Vermeulen, this starts his internship in MotoGP as he will spend the couple of months racing the Camel Honda as a replacement for Bayliss. He’ll be racing at home in Australia this coming weekend, then at a track in Turkey that is new for all the riders and finally the season closer at Valencia. If Vermeulen can put in respectible performances aboard the RC211V then he will be assured of a MotoGP ride in ‘06. Its hard to get a better new beginning than that. For Lanzi, his win at Magny Cours has assuredly locked up his ‘06 ride on the factory Ducati. Having an Italian rider aboard the Italian bike is always a dream of both the company and it’s fans. Lanzi has put in some spectacular rides this season aboard a privateer Ducati and seemed to naturally fall into this position once Laconi was injured. His results speak for themselves in that regard. Whether the 999 can be competitive near year against the in-line fours is yet to be seen but they have a rider who is certain to add excitement to the series in 2006.

Congrats to both of these young riders for having such a strong finish for the season and best of luck to them as they take the next step in their respective careers.

[image from the motoring.co.za web site.]

Back in June I wrote a blog entry about the MRA, the local Colorado roadrace series, in which I stated that “Many of the top riders in the MRA have been ruling the club’s races for a decade now…Its time for some talented youngsters to step it up and give these guys some competition“. Well, now that the season is over it is time I give one rider in particular some credit for doing just that: Brad Hendry, MRA rider #616.

I’ve been watching the MRA for over ten years now. During that time the same riders have always dominated: Ricky Orlando, Donny Hough, Dan Turner, Aaron Turner, Shane Turpin. All of these guys are great club racers and many have had flashes of success at the national level but all are older, most are in their thirties and a few in their forties. As much as I enjoy watching talented riders demonstrate their skills on the bike no matter what their age I also enjoying spotting the young guys that have the talent to go on to greater things. At the moment I think Brad Hendry is far and away the fastest rising star in Colorado.

There are a few reasons that Hendry impresses me. First off, he’s clearly just naturally talented on a motorcycle. After racing motocross since he was 13 he just made the switch to road racing three years ago. Despite racing on pavement for such a short time he is already pushing the MRA front runners. Clearly he has adapted quickly to the speed, the feel and the technique needed to road race. Another sure sign of talent is when someone can consistently push hard enough to run at the front and yet rarely crashes. So far this season, Brad hasn’t had a single DNF.

Second, the guy has an amazing work ethic. I think there are a lot of talented racers in the world (a guy like Anthony Gobert, for example, had amazing raw talent) but many lack the understanding that hard work is required to do well beyond a certain level. Brad is not only racing the MRA season full time but also raced select AMA and AHRMA events during the ‘05 season. In addition to racing Brad is also a full time student at University of Colorado scheduled to graduate this winter with a degree in marketing. Oh, and on top of all that he is also working part time at Foothills BMW. Clearly, this kid is willing to punch the clock if that is what is required to get the job done.

Another positive aspect of that mindset is that he seems to have set his goals very high and that motivates him to keep diving into the deep end in order to become a better rider. After just two years of racing with the MRA Hendry decided to focus his efforts in 2005 on the Open Superbike and Race of the Rockies GTO classes. These are probably the two hardest fought classes in the club’s line-up. For a relative rookie rider to pit himself against the best in the club meant that he would have to learn fast and that is exactly what he’s done. He has shown that he has the hunger to improve with each race and a burning desire to be the best. When he’s finished in the top ten, he wanted a top five. Once he was in the top five, he wanted to be on the podium. Once he was on the podium, he wasn’t happy until he won. Because of that drive, his results for the year speak for themselves:

At the first race at PPIR:
Race of the Rockies GTO - 10th
Open Superbike - 6th

The second race at Second Creek Raceway:
Race of the Rockies GTO - 4th
Open Superbike - 5th
Supertwins GTO - 12th

The third race at Continental Divide Raceway:
Race of the Rockies GTO - 4th
Open Superbike - 3rd
Supertwins GTO - 9th

The fourth race at La Junta Motorsports Park:
Race of the Rockies GTO - 4th
Open Superbike - 2nd

The fifth race at Pueblo Motorsports Park:
Race of the Rockies GTO - 3rd
Open Superbike - 2nd
Supertwins GTO - 9th

The double header, races six and seven, at PPIR:
Race of the Rockies GTO #1 - 3rd
Open Superbike #1 -3rd

Race of the Rockies GTO #2 - 3rd
Open Superbike #2 - 2nd

The nineth race at Pueblo Motorsports Park:
Race of the Rockies GTO - 3rd
Open Superbike - 2nd

Finally, the tenth race at Second Creek Raceway:
Race of the Rockies GTO - 5th
Open Superbike - 1st

The final points for the season haven’t yet been posted by the MRA but it looks like Brad has a good shot at winning the Open Superbike championship and being top three in Race of the Rockies GTO title race. This shows a trend of steady improvement throughout the year and a very respectable pair of finishes for the year.

On top of all this success there is another thing that I think will really help Brad out in the future. He seems to be a genuinely nice guy. There are a lot of guys racing who have attitude and ego problems which seem to hold them back. There is a fine line between having a healthy dose of self confidence and having an major ego issue. Some riders, notably Ben Spies and the Hayden brothers, seem to have found the former while others like Jason Disalvo appear to struggle with the later. So far, Hendry has shown a lot of respect towards his rivals while still having the competitiveness and aggressiveness needed to race against them. When beaten on the race track by more experienced riders he still has the unshakable belief in himself to learn from his defeat and then to line back up against them on the starting grid with the intent to win. When the racing is over, he can shake their hand and share in the experience of racing motorcycles with his fellow riders. That kind of attitude is always welcome by team owners who not only want results but also want riders who can interact in a positive way with fans, crew, teammates and other riders.

So, you may be thinking, why devote so much time on my blog to one club racer? Well, it is because I really hope to see big things happen for the guy. When I talked to him at Second Creek a week ago his plan for 2006 is to again climb another rung up the road racing ladder. He and his father have bought two ‘05 GSXR-1000s from the Corona Suzuki team and hope to race the entire AMA series next year competing in the Superstock and Superbike classes. Its going to be a steep learning curve but one which I think is essential if he wants to continue to challenge himself and if he wants to attract the attention of people who can help further his career as a roadracer. Brad’s degree in marketing should immediately be put to the test since marketing himself off the track is going to be just as important as his results on the track. Next year will require a lot of hard work: travelling, learning new tracks, racing at the top national level, constantly trying to improve as a rider, doing the delicate job of learning the political landscape in the AMA paddock and somewhere in there trying to still have a family and social life. I think he has the talent, the drive, the work ethic and the attitude to be successful in the sport despite all of those challenges. I’m looking forward to watching his progress in ‘06.

[image from my photo collection.]

I know I’ve said before that I love motorcycles but let me reiterate that for a second. I love motorcycles!

This past weekend was a perfect reason of why that is. Motorcycles, as you undoubtedly know, are vehicles. However, they are not only vehicles for physical travel but also vehicles for emotional travel. The past week at work has been pretty hectic and as I’m sure everyone knows, a bad week at work is pretty much a reason in itself to be down on life. Coming into the weekend, I really needed to recharge my emotional batteries. Earlier in the week I dropped long time riding buddy Todd Unpronounceable an email suggesting we get out this weekend and do our annual end of the summer ride. My thoughts were that we head up into the high country in Summit County and spend a long day zig-zagging our way across a bunch of the passes over the Continental Divide. Well Todd, ever the dirt riding nut, proposed a different plan which centered around exploring forest service roads in the Routt National Forest in northern Colorado and southern Wyoming. Being an easy going kind of guy, I agreed.

Now a little bit of history is needed here. I’m not a good dirt rider. Todd, on the other hand, started riding dirt around the same time I did but has taken to it like the proverbial duck to water. When riding on pavement we are pretty evenly matched but when the riding moves off road I’m often riding over my head. As a result, I’ve decided Todd is actively trying to kill me based on the rides we do that he deems “easy” and I deem “Holy crap, I’m gonna die if I try to go down that cliff". I’ve been giving Todd a rash all summer about this despite his vehement denials of any such thing. So based on this situation I hope you can appreciate how bad my week must have been that I was willing to blindly accept anything Todd might put me through and still consider it more relaxing than what I’d just experienced at work.

The second sign of just how desperate I was go to get out and ride was that I agreed to an 8am meeting time in the town of Lyons. That’s about an hour from my house which means I’d have to somehow drag my lazy night-owl butt out of a warm, comfy bed at 6 freakin’ am so I could leave on time. Despite knowing full well that I had an early morning planned for Saturday I was still up until well after midnight Friday night…its hard to break a pattern even when I know I’ll be paying for it the next day.

Despite all this, we finally got out and had a fantastic day of riding. After leaving the house at 7am, I got back home at 9:30pm Saturday night. That’s fourteen and a half hours of riding with only a couple of meals and a couple of gas stops to break it up. The mileage total was just under 500 miles with 150 of those completely on dirt. We explored some favorite paved roads, a lot of forest service roads, a couple of double track trails and a few little rural dirt roads. We probably spent half the day above 9500 ft in elevation and most of that was in gorgeous national forest land. In the end, we not only put a lot of miles on the bikes but I also went from being stressed and tired on Friday to being downright ecstatic by Saturday evening. That’s how motorcycles can really move me.

Some of my highlights from the ride:

1) We rode Stove Prairie Road in the morning on our way to the Poudre Canyon. Riding down into a little valley there was mist rising up from the wet grass in a meadow as the morning sun first shown through onto it. Trotting through the middle of this foggy landscape of yellows and oranges and greens was a coyote with his winter fur all fluffed up for warmth. Its hard not to loose a little of the work stress when you get to see something special like that.

2) We had planned to ride over Buffalo Pass from Walden to Steamboat Springs. That idea slid to a halt three miles short of the Buffalo Pass summit when we hit snow. We’d been riding through snow patches and mud for a few miles before that but eventually we hit a spot where the road was completely covered with about 2 inches of snow. Todd put forth a valiant effort in an attempt to push through but after about 15 ft his KTM started kicking up a rooster tail of slush and stopped all forward motion. We scrapped the plan to check out the Routt National Forest and spent the rest of the day exploring the Roosevelt National Forest area instead.

3) Riding on some little county roads in a wildlife refuge near Walden we came upon a big antelope buck. We ended up pacing him for almost a mile as he bounded along at speeds topping out near 30 mph. What a beautiful animal and it was amazing to see him so close and to watch him for so long.

4) We rode over 100 miles exploring Forest Service roads between Cowdrey and Rustic but my favorite two were the Kings Canyon Pass and the western end of Deadman’s Road. Both are beautiful one lane dirt roads that go over passes in the Medicine Bow range. The area is full of thick pine forests, lush creeks and panoramic views but are very lightly travelled. I think we only saw a couple of other vehicles in the three or four hours we were exploring these roads.

5) I got home a few hours after the sun had set and pulled the incredibly grimy GS into the garage. After a full day of riding, Todd hadn’t actually tried to kill me and instead was the catalyst to an fantastic day of motorcycle adventure. Despite being exhausted I really wasn’t ready to quit riding. The day’s ride had been so close to perfect that I really didn’t want it to end. I was also having a hard time remember exactly what had bothered me so much the previous week and wondering how something so minor as work could bug me when there was so much more to enjoy in my world.

Have I mentioned that I really love motorcycles?

[image from my photo collection.]

This weekend the World Superbike paddock bids “Adieu” to another season. The closer is again the magnificent Magny Cours Circuit in France. The track is built to European Formula 1 car specs but is still a fantastic motorcycle racing venue. So much so, in fact, that the annual Bol D’Or 24 hour endurance motorcycle race was moved to the track from its original home at Paul Ricard. Unlike America, where endurance racing is barely a blip on the screen of even die hard motorcycle racing enthusiasts, the Bol D’Or is hugely popular in France and thus it says a lot that Magny Cours hosts the event.

The 2.74 mile long track has a bit of everything. Like most F1 tracks, there are chicanes and hairpin turns which slow the bikes down to first gear. There are a few of these which stand out. First is the Adelaide Hairpin about halfway through a lap where the bikes have to turn back practically 180 degrees. The second is the Imola Chicane where the bikes have to transition from right to left while very near top speed. This then leads into the third slow section which is the Chateau d’Eau Hairpin. Put all of these together than the bikes will have to run relatively stiff front end to deal with all the braking forces. Technically, the track is listed as having 14 turns but there are large number of little kinks around the tracks so that count is a bit deceiving. These same slight bends are what give the track a completely different character than the tight turns might initially indicate. The first quarter of the track from the time the bikes leave Estoril all the way through Golf corner and into the Adelaide hairpin is a long sweeping right hand turn. The front forks which have been set up to deal with major braking will now be too stiff for the fast sweeping corners. For the riders, it means finding a compromise on suspension and, in turn, deciding which part of the track they will be fast on and which they will sacrifice. It should be very interesting to watch the splits to see which riders made which choice.

In addition to the excellent track facilities there will also be the bike crazed French fans on hand. As with any home race, expect the native riders to put in noticable performances. In France, that means Regis Laconi and Sebastian Gimbert. Laconi is still recovering from his tendon injury and was visibly slowed by it last weekend at Imola. Only time will tell whether the energy from the French fans will help him over come his pain. Gimbert actually has two things going for him. First, is the fact that he is racing on home soil. Second is the fact that the former endurance champ probably has more laps around Magny Cours that any living motorcycle racer. Last year, Gimbert really showed his stuff at Magny Cours so keep an eye on him to do the same. Finally, another endurance racing star will be on hand, in this case it is David Checa who is making another wildcard appearance for Yamaha. Like Gimbert, Checa knows the circuit better than most since the Spanish rider has been racing in the World Endurance series for the past few years, so expect him to be further up the order that wildcards generally appear.

Still, the favorites this weekend have to again be Troy Corser and Chris Vermeulen. The two riders have been the class of the field over the past three or four weekends and I suspect they will continue that at Magny Cours. Both riders have something to prove: Corser wants to show that he was just playing conservative over the last few races and not that he was out classed by his Honda rival. Vermeulen, on the other hand, wants to show that he is the best rider on the track and that it was only bike problems early in the season that allowed his Suzuki counterpart to build up the insurmountable points lead.

There are a lot of riders that are still out trying to get rides for next season. James Toseland probably tops the list, although it isn’t clear whether this teammate Laconi is signed for ‘06 either. Likewise, Kagayama will be out to show that he deserves to be back in WSBK next year as his season as been inconclusive with early season success followed by a mid season slump. Most of the Yamaha riders are still looking for a job and riders like Pitt and Abe could go either way at this point. Both need to show they can do better than struggle for top ten finishes.

Also on the list of riders that will be hoping to end the season strong is the long list of guys joining Laconi on the injured reserve list. Ben Bostrom is still recovering from a back injury and if anybody needs a decent result to close out the season its Benny. The Kawasaki squad of Chris Walker and Mauro Sanchini are still recovering from elbow injuries so they will again have Fonsi Nieto on board as a wildcard in France. Gary McCoy is still out but Foggy has brought in test rider Andi Notman to ride the second Petronas bike.

Looks like the racing this weekend will make for a great way to close out the season.

[image from the eTracks web site.]

It is tough being Jeff Ward.

In 2003, when the AMA made the surprising leap into the world of supermoto racing they decided to do something different with the series. Rather than having a conventional season where points are awarded at each round until one rider gains enough to win a championship the AMA decided to have each round just a qualifier for a single end-of-the-season, winner-take-all race. During that initial season, it was ex-motocross legend Jeff Ward that consistently won races. Coming into the ‘03 season finale in Las Vegas, Ward had won three of the five races. However, those wins didn’t mean anything in terms of the Supermoto #1 plate. When the green flag flew in the final race of the season it was Ben Bostrom that got the job done and was crowned the inaugural AMA Supermoto champ. Ward crossed the line a disappointed third behind second place Doug Henry.

Last year, the AMA decided to run a traditional season without any of the final race shenanigans. With this more conventional setup Ward was able to use his consistent riding to trounce the field. In ‘04 Ward won three times, was second twice and third in the other two races. He was never off the podium and that dominant riding earned the seven time Supercross and Motocross champ his first AMA Supermoto title. KTM’s Jurgen Kunzel was second with Doug Henry third.

This year, the AMA was up to their old tricks again. Not content to just build another exciting series they again changed up the rules for the Supermoto series. First, each round of the 2005 season would feature two races for the premier Supermoto class as well as the usual one race each for the Supermoto Unlimited class, the Supermoto Lite class and the Junior Supermoto class. This meant the Supermoto guys would have twelve different races at which to earn points toward the championship. However, the rules mavens weren’t content with just this twist to the rules. They also deemed that the final race of the season, race two at the finale in Reno, would pay double points. This meant that there were effectively 13 races based on the amount of points that would be available throughout the season. Finally, another rule was added that anyone could race the final event but only those that earned points in the earlier rounds would actually be eligible for points at the end. Confused already? Good…

The season has once again been primarily about Jeff Ward. Despite a slow start to the season by the time everyone headed to the final round it was Ward that held a commanding 31 point lead. Back in June, when the season first got started at Road America, Wardy was still trying to race cars. The distraction of going cage racing meant he wasn’t training and that showed with a pair of fourth place finishes. He followed those up with an equally uncharacteristic 6/4 showing at Shawano. It was at Copper Mountain here in Colorado that the Team Troy Lee Designs rider really hit his stride winning all four of the races held during the Suzuki Cycle Fest weekend. That quad set of victories propelled him into the points lead in the championship and he backed that up with a second and another victory at the Nashville round. When the riders showed up in Reno for the Red Bull Superrmoto A-Go-Go all the money was on Ward to sew up his second Supermoto championship. I even predicted as much in my race preview last Friday.

But it wasn’t to be. The funky AMA rules once again got the better of him and stole another championship right out from under him. Ward came in second in the first race of the weekend doubleheader behind Mark Burkhart but ahead of championship rival Jurgen Kunzel. Since this was Burkhart’s first weekend racing the premier class in ‘05 he wasn’t eligible for any points meaning Ward effectively won the first race. This allowed him to carry a 35 point lead into the final double-points paying race of the year. Despite the large points lead, Ward made a rare mistake by crashing while battling with race leader Burkhart. Ward was able to get back up and finish but he was outside the top 20. Burkhart won the race while Kunzel took the runner up position. Again, because Mark had no previous points in Supermoto this season he got zero points while Jurgen got the full 25 which was then doubled to 50. Because of the double points situation, Kunzel’s 2/2 finishes netted him a total of 72 points for the weekend versus just 25 for Ward’s win in race one. This allowed the German to jump ahead of Ward in the points battle and thus to snatch away the 2005 Supermoto Championship. Once again, Ward has been torpedoed by a screwy rule from the AMA.

The Supermoto Unlimited class came into Reno with a much closer points battle that that in the premier Supermoto category. Three riders were separated by only six points and two of them were yet to win a race this year. All five of the races leading up to Reno has been won by either Troy Herfoss or David Baffeleuf. However, it was Herfoss, along with Micky Dymond and Darryl Atkins, who were in the title fight as Baffeleuf missed scoring points at the Colorado races due to an injury from a crash in the first race at Copper Mountain. Those DNFs left the Frenchman a distant fourth in the points. While both Atkins and Dymond had visited the podium neither had yet won a race and yet they were separated by only one point in a near 1-2 tie for the championship. This lead to the possibility that the Unlimited champ might never have stepped to the top of the podium if one of them earned the title without winning in Reno. Coming into the final race the title fight was on.

In the race that proved particularly true. Since this was effectively a winner-take-all race for the three title contenders the racing was going to be pretty tight. As it turns out, the racing may have been too tight. Once the race was underway it was Atkins, Herfoss, Dymond and Baffeleuf that went to the front. Almost immediately there after, Herfoss and then Baffeleuf ended their race with crashes both while leading the race. Now the title was between Atkins and Dymond and they were both up front battling for the lead. After an initial exchange of positions it was Atkins who held the front position in every corner except the final one. He held a tight line going into the last corner but then ran a little wide when he got on the gas for the charge to the line. The seasoned vet Dymond saw the gap and went for it but ended up making contact which sent Atkins slamming into the trackside barriers. Dymond crossed the line for the win while Atkins remounted to take third behind Rodney Taplin. The win netted the veteran KTM rider the points necessary to claim the title over his New Zealand teammate.

In Supermoto Lites it was Brandon Currie that took advantage of Mark Burkhart’s absence from the final race of the sesason to grab his first win. Just to make sure that Supermoto Lites didn’t get overlooked in the drama comparison between the classes Currie went about winning the race in an unusual way…he threw the bike away in the first few laps and then had to fight his way back from the crash to get to the front. He was aided in this by earlier race leader Joel Albrecht who’s bike started having brake problems at the mid-point of the race. Currie’s eventual win allowed him to gain enough points to solidify second in the ‘Lites class for the year.

So my picks for the weekend…Well, clearly all the champions deserve a quick shout-out:

Supermoto - Jurgen Kunzel
Supermoto Unlimited - Micky Dymond
Supermoto Lites - Mark Burkhart

However, I also think Jeff Ward deserves props for again being the most impressive rider in the Supermoto series, all this despite being 44 years of age. Had it not been for strange rules, Ward would now be a three time Supermoto champ. Sure, Ward shouldn’t have been racing with Burkhart since the Yamaha rider wasn’t elligible for points but its in the heart of a racer to race. Besides, had the AMA not put the bizarre rules in place it probably wouldn’t have been an issue.

Second, I think Mark Burkhart deserves a lot of recognition for his undefeated season in 2005. As if sweeping all the Supermoto Lites races he entered wasn’t enough he then stepped up to the main class for the last race of the season and won both of those as well. His dominance in the Lites class wasn’t all that surprising…after all he was racing a factory supported Yamaha in a class mainly populated by privateers. It is the fact that he won both races in Supermoto against the other factory supported bikes that impressed me. Rumor has it he’ll be racing Supermoto full time in ‘06 along side Doug Henry so the other riders better watch out. I expect to see a bunch of blue on the podium next year.

I think Atkins deserves a little more credit as well. Losing a championship is bad enough but losing it because your teammate took you out is harsh indeed. As with many racing incidents it is hard place blame but I still think that Atkins had done everything he needed to do to win the race and did it without crashing into other riders. Dymond won the glory for the day but he did it in a questionable manner. Lets hope rough riding doesn’t become the norm in Supermoto.

Finally, lets hear it for the fans in Reno. The official count for the weekend shows that 45,000 people attended the Supermoto races over the weekend. That is more than attended most of the AMA Superbike races this season and in line with the max for most of the AMA Motocross races. This is a case where being able to hold a race in the middle of a substantial sized city, along with offering free admission, is going to draw a lot of new eyes to the sport. If any of those eyes are impressed enough to come back again then the AMA has done a great job using Supermoto as marketing for all the various forms of motorcycle competition. Bravo!

Finally, it will be a long winter waiting for the Supermoto series to get cranked up again next year. In the meantime, I’ll be feeling bad for Wardy and will be wondering what unusual rules the AMA will think up for next season.

[image from my photo collection.]

Back in June I did a write-up about how cool club racing is after catching one of this season’s MRA races. At the time I talked about a few different issues including criticizing the quality of the local tracks, pointing out the continued dominance by veteran riders in the series and talked about how great it is to watch a race in such a casual environment rather than being confined to some spectator only area like at a big pro race. Well, this past weekend was the final race of the 2005 MRA season and I headed down to be part of the last hoorah for the year. After just a few months some of the items I mentioned back in June have changed so I’ll try to touch on all that during this posting.

First off, the race at Second Creek marked the end of racing at this venue, not just for the year but permanently. As I mentioned in a posting I did back in April the encroachment of house developments has finally put an end to Second Creek Raceway. With the season over, the track is boarding up its doors and going up for sale. With the recent announcement that PPIR is being sold and closed after October the MRA has lost two race venues in one summer. Ouch! I hope that the new Miller Motorsports Park facility outside Salt Lake City is worth riders making the long drive and that the MRA can get at least one event there in 2006. What the club will lack in quantity of tracks perhaps it can make up in quality if a date at MMP can be added to the schedule. Anyway, with this being the final race at Second Creek as well as the last race of the season there was an added bit of excitement in the air on Sunday. Racers came out of retirement for brief race appearances, lots of stories were told about the history of MRA racing at the circuit and most riders put in that extra little bit of effort to win the last race at the track for their class or to try to break the lap record one final time. The attendance was huge, following a trend for the entire season, with more and more riders registering for races and and equal positive trend among spectator turn out. Definitely a good weekend to be at the track.

I again spent about half my time hanging out in the Brewer/Baker pits. In addition to racing and performing their regular MRA board duties the two clowns were also helping out with announcing races. This mean their normally chaotic race weekend was even more crazy. When Jim or Tony were around the pits, the usual pit banter ensued which generally means that insults, lewd comments and cussing were the norm. In Jim’s case, he had family from out of town visiting but it turns out his brother only added to the mayhem. Good entertainment value for those of us in the area but probably even more insanity for Jim to deal with…why again is it he calls this fun?

The two amigos had a mixed weekend but a good season overall. Jim got knocked out of the lead while passing a backmarker in the Super Twins GTO race. Fortunately, he’d tied up the championship at the last round so it was only pride, plastic and contingency money that got damaged in the accident. The crash bent the bracket for his electric shifter and that caused him problems in his remaining races. He started strong but faded in Heavyweight Superbike while having to re-learn how to manually shift a motorcycle when the fancy gadget quit working. After adjusting the shifter for Race of the Rockies GTO he found it was too sensitive and was causing the engine to constantly cut out on the bumpy track. Jim runs RoR to pick up extra contingency cash and the bike problem relegated him to 17th, two spots outside the money paying positions. The one accident in the morning pretty much screwed up the day especially since he didn’t have time to focus on the bike given his other duties. Ah, the sacrifices of being a Big Kahuna with the club… Winning the twins class on his RSV Mille means Jimbo qualifies for a pretty big check from Aprilia so at least he’ll have that to console him after a rough weekend at the race track.

Tony, meanwhile, had a better day. He had a solid finish aboard his RZ500 in Modern Vintage which was what he needed to earn him that championship. The previous day he’d sewn up the Supermoto Sportsmen class which puts two number one plates in his garage for the winter. Tony bagged on the rest of his races for Sunday to focus on the announcing and helping out with club duties. Or so he claims…there is always a question mark over how well the old two smoke is handling the stresses of racing so perhaps taking a day off was just giving the old mule a much needed rest. Tony and Jim both spent about half the day in the tower on the PA system and they did a respectable job there as well.

“Congratulations” and “Thanks” go out to both guys for winning their titles, entertaining nearly everyone in the pits at one time or another and for all the work they put into the MRA.

Another of the gripes in my June posting was that the MRA was dominated by old guys and that there wasn’t enough new blood coming along to challenge the established order. Well, I’m glad to say there are signs that is changing. First of all, there is Brad Hendry who consistently challenged the front runners in both Open Superbike and Race of the Rockies. I’m going to do a separate blog entry focusing just on him so look for that in the next week. On Sunday Brad had mixed fortunes. He took a commanding win in Open Superbike but then had a mechanical problem while leading Race of the Rockies that dropped him back to fifth. He rode over half the race without a shifter so to finish that strong was impressive even if losing a potential victory was heartbreaking for him. Also impressive at Second Creek was Ryan Burke. While Ryan quit qualifying for newcomer status about five years ago he is at least on the lower side of 40 which makes him young compared to the guys that have been winning MRA titles for the past decade. Ryan ran strong in Race of the Rockies GTO, the premier race class for the club, which is the surest sign that a rider is improving. He has also been runnin at the front in Open Superbike and Open Supersport all season which again shows he’s running with the big dogs. I hope that Ryan continues to improve next season as he may be the best hope for some new blood to win the #1 plate in ‘06.

As for the established order, they continue to rule in the MRA. Shane Turpin ran strong for the first half of Sunday’s races before a crash while leading Race of the Rockies GTO ended his day early with a knee injury. It is a rare day indeed that sees Turpin crash but the turns at the back side of Second Creek seem to be one of his few weak spots as he has crashed there before. The trip into the dirt also ended his chance of sweeping every RoR GTO race of the season. Still, he tied up the championship a few races back and will once again be carrying that big #1 plate for 2006. Likewise, Dan Turner ran in the top three for most of his races including a strong win in Race of the Rockies GTO. Ricky Orlando made a rare MRA appearance and showed why he’s such an established part of the scene with good results in his races. In fact, club elders were at the front in most of the classes with guys like Dave Galant, Denny Burke, Rich Deeming and Mike Applegate all turning in strong performances for the weekend.

Finally, I want to again touch on just how much fun it is to hang out at a club race. The pits are casual and the riders approachable. Since this was the last race of the season the entire place turned into a party as soon as the checkered flag few on the final race of the day. Grills were fired up, beers were opened, rear tires went up in huge clouds of smoke and crazy stunts were performed on pit bikes. There are a lot of great things about the rules that are in place for national and international level motorcycle racing: bikes and riders have to look professional, pits are generally roped off, unsafe behavior is stopped immediately, a strict schedule is generally adhered to and the general atmosphere is one of organization. This is all well and good but it does have a bit of sterility to it which tends to exclude the enthusiastic spectator from being a part of it all. Club racing, on the other hand, is so much more relaxed. Sure, you will have to be more alert to make sure you don’t get nailed by the guy doing wheelies on a mini-bike and you may want to think twice before bringing your kid into someone’s pit space without first listening in to make sure the conversation in progress doesn’t touch on topics you may not want Little Billy to learn at a tender young age. Still, the great thing is that its so “real". The guys that crashed aren’t sitting around waiting for mechanics to wheel over their replacement bike they are in there frantically turning wrenches trying to get ready for the next race. The guy that came in third probably isn’t sulking in an RV he is instead more likely to be sitting under his neighbor’s canopy excitedly detailing the race. The guy that won isn’t wisked away by the media he is hanging out in his pit drinking a gatorade and chatting with whoever walks up. You can be part of the scene at a MRA race not just be watching it.

Club racing is fantastic and I’m already looking forward to next year. The MRA has some hurdles to over come but the group exists because there are a bunch of people in Colorado that are passionate about road racing. As long as there is that passion there will be somewhere to race, whether it is Mark Miller Motorsports Park, Continental Divide Race Park, La Junta Raceway or Pueblo Motorsports Park. If you are in Colorado, please plan to come out in 2006 and support the club.

[image from my photo collection.]

A storm has been brewing in the World Superbike over the three rounds as Ten Kate Honda’s Chris Vermeulen has been winning races and clawing back championship points in the battle against leader Troy Corser. With the World Superbike series winding down to just two weekends remaining the recent races at Imola where a watershed moment.

Coming into the race the pressure was on Vermeulen as he trailed Corser by 60 points at the start of the weekend. However, Vermeulen was looking good having won three off the last four races and coming in second behind Lanzi in the race he didn’t win. This streak meant he had been consistently out scoring his rival countryman and slowly closing the points gap. If Vermuelen could add to his string of victories at Imola then he could keep his title hopes alive until the final round at Magny Cours.

As early as the first practice it was obvious that both Australian riders came to Italy prepared to do what needed to be done. Both were among the fastest riders in the first practice and both were one-two in the first qualifying session with Corser holding a slim tenth of a second advantage in lap times when the sticky tires were mounted up. The two riders were again quick in the second qualifying round, again separated by little more than a tenth of a second, although Corser’s teammate Kagayama split the two for second on the provisional grid. When superpole rolled around Chris did what he had to do and turned in the fastest lap seen all weekend with a blistering 1:48.075 lap time. Corser ended up a half second back in third, the two kept apart on the grid by Ducati’s Regis Laconi. The second Ducati of James Toseland finished off the front row.

Speaking of the two Ducati riders, this is a good time to give a brief review of the state of the Superbike grid. Having both of the Ducs on the front row is amazing and a testament to how hard their riders were pushing to impress the team bosses with them racing so close to Bologna. Laconi was back for his first time on the bike after his Assen accident that damaged a tendon in his arm. Toseland, likewise, was racing injured having bruised his hand in a practice crash on Friday. Lanzi ended qualifying at the front of the second row on his loaner factory Ducati meaning all three factory bikes were in the top five. Given Ducati’s history at Imola this surely had the Italian bosses worked into a frenzy. Things weren’t quite so rosy over at Kawasaki where injured riders Walker and Sanchini were both recovering from broken elbows. Kawasaki brought in newly unemployeed Fonsi Nieto to ride a third bike but given his performance for Yamaha earlier in the season this didn’t necessarily look to improve their the green team’s chances. I’m sure there were long faces in the Kawasaki garages all weekend but this was especially so after qualifying where Walker was mired back in 16th with his two teammates further down the grid behind him. Another rider that was riding injured was Ben Bostrom who was flung off his Honda during qualifying. No major injuries but a general battering that wasn’t going to do him any favors. Missing completely from the grid was Foggy Petronas’ McCoy who was out with a broken coccyx. The Aussie is likely out for the remainder of the season.

The injury list aside there were a few other surprises when qualifying was over. The second row, as I’ve already mentioned, was headed by Lanzi followed by Haga, Kagayama and then the bombshell of Bostrom who turned in the eighth fastest time despite his aches and pains. Given how poorly he’s qualified for most of this year, maybe he needs to start highsiding during practice on a more frequent basis as it seems to actually improve his results. Another surprise was Frankie Chili who was down in 14th on the grid. He has been running closer to the front that than all season and I thought he would get caught up in the spirit of racing in front of his home crowd as he usually does at Monza. Just racing in Italy is usually good for a front row start for the Honda rider but apparently that wasn’t the case this weekend.

With the dark clouds gathering, both figuratively and literally, the riders lined up for race one. Before things could get started the clouds opened up with a brief shower that drenched the track. The marshalls decided to give all the riders a brief wet weather practice and then get things started under “wet race” rules. With the track damp but drying, most of the riders went with slicks but Vermeulen took a big gamble to go with an intermediate front. This meant he should have more confidence in the early laps but would risk destroying the tire should the track dry up during the race.

When the green lights came on it was Corser who made the leap off the line to the front of the pack with Vermeulen a close second. Half way through the first lap Chris put the grooved tire to good use to make the pass on Troy. Even as early as the first lap the wet conditions started to cause problems for riders. Chili and Silva crashed out immediately and Muggeridge retired with mechanical problems after overheating his clutch trying to get the slicks to hook up on the wet start. Within a few laps others would join the crashers with Abe, Kagayama, Lanzi and Pitt all dropping their bikes due to the wet surface. Pitt and Kagayama were both able to restart but both were outside the points by the time they returned to the track.

The race quickly broke into three main battles. Up front, the two championship leaders were stuck tight together with Vermeulen holding the tire advantage but Corser clearly with the horse power needed to force a pass despite his more tentative corner entries. A few seconds back was another dog fight, this one between Toseland and Haga. The third group, a few seconds even further behind, was a scrap between Walker, Martin, Neukirchner and Gimbert. In all three groups, passes were frequent but the most spectacular racing was between Haga and Toseland. Neither was willing to let the other lead and both were making risky passes given the mixed track conditions. Despite their antics, the battle for second place started to make up ground on the lead pair which made it look as if the fight for victory would boil down to a four bike scrap. However, two events happened almost simultaneously which changed all that. First, Vermeulen made another pass on Corser to retake the lead but then upped the pace to the same lap times being running by the chasing riders. Second, with six laps to go Toseland ran wide and allowed Haga past for third. With Toseland loosing valuable time and Haga stalled in his forward progress, the battle boiled down to just the two men in front.

Once Vermeulen went to the point position Corser seemed content to park on this rear wheel and wait for a last lap pass. This was probably a wise strategy, especially considering that the track had indeed dried up during the course of the race which mean that Vermeulen’s intermediate front tire was busy over-heating with each lap. It also looked as if his rear tire was taking a beating as well since he was drifting the rear each time he tried to get the Honda’s power to the ground. By the last lap, Chris was all over the track but despite his obvious tire problems his lap times weren’t dropping off. To the surprise of everyone, and no one more so that Troy Corser, the Honda rider was able to maintain his lead through the last lap, despite an attempt by Corser for a pass, and to hold on to win the race. This victory allowed him to close another five points on Corser and keep the championship storm rolling into the second race. Haga head on to third and Toseland recovered from his off track mistake to finish fourth. Martin made a last lap pass on the wounded Walker to close out the top five. The rain took its toll with only 16 bikes completing the race despite 34 bikes originally lining up for the start.

Unfortunately, Vermeulen’s dream weekend came to a rapid halt when the real storm intervened. While the riders were preparing for the second race another cloud burst soaked the track and this time it wasn’t likely to dry up. After some of the top riders were given a tour of the circuit in the pace car it was decided that the track was too dangerous to continue the event and the second race was cancelled. While it is always disappointing to have a race cancelled I applaud the race marshalls for making that decision. (This is especially true given how poorly the marshalls handled the rain storm that happened during the World Supersport race earlier in the day!).

With race two cancelled due to the rain, the math worked out that there weren’t enough points available at the upcoming Magny Cours rounds to allow Vermeulen to catch Corser. The sun broke through the proverbial clouds and shown down upon Corser as the cancellation made Troy Corser the 2005 World Superbike champion with a 55 point lead over Vermeulen. This marks the first ever WSBK championship for Suzuki and the second WSBK title for Corser. As I mentioned at the beginning of the season, Corser had a deep desire this year to show that his poor results over the past four seasons while he rode the Petronas were because of the bike he was on and not a lack of talent on his part. He has definitely proved that this year.

I remember watching Troy ride the Fast by Ferraci Ducati in ‘94 enroute to the AMA Superbike championship and knowing he was a spectacular rider. That opinion was reinforced in 1996 when he won the World Superbike title. I think this title shows just how much his talent was wasted in the years between 2002 and 2005. I think Corser could have given both Hodgson and Toseland runs for their money during their respective championships if he’d just had something decent underneath him.

Finally, congratulations to Troy Corser and the Corona Suzuki team for winning the ‘05 Superbike title.

[image from the Alstare Corona Suzuki web site.]

“No Arab loves the desert. We love water and green trees. There is nothing in the desert and no man needs nothing.”
– Prince Feisal, _Lawrence of Arabia_

There was so much racing this weekend that I’ll have to split up my coverage in blog entries over the next week or so. First up, the MotoGP race at Losail circuit in Qatar…

Like Sufi mystics, a handful of riders headed out into the burning confines of the Qatar desert with the hope of finding something inside themselves. For Loris Capirossi, it was finding the strength to win a third straight race. For Sete Gibernau, it was breaking his one year old dry spell of victories in the premier class. For Max Biaggi it was to get beyond having his championship chances dashed at Sepang and to now focus on consolidating his second place in the championship. For Colin Edwards it was another chance to build confidence by matching his teammates’ spectacular results. For everyone else it was a chance to prove to themselves and the world that they deserve a ride for next year. …and for all of them the dry sands of Arabia were a harsh place indeed.

Things started out strong for Capirossi who earned his third straight pole position. Unfortunately, other than his one lap wonder on the impressive Bridgestone qualifying tires his lap times weren’t very impressive which meant he would be fighting an uphill battle if he hoped to win the race. Gibernau also came out swinging while the stop watches were ticking to take second on the grid. Also, his practice lap times indicated he had could run the presumed race pace and thus had a chance at breaking “The Curse” and taking a win. Rossi qualified in third position at the track where he crashed last year after the grid cleaning fiasco to make it three different brands on the front row. That kind of machine diversity is good for a series that has been primarily dominated by a single brand all season long. Also, on paper the circuit looks like it would favor the Hondas, as Gibernau’s second and fifth place Melandri proved, so it was nice to see both of the Yamahas and both of the Ducatis in the front two rows showing that overall the bikes may be on a more even footing that the season’s results might initially indicate. While Capirossi was shining at the front his countryman Max Biaggi was sulking near the back of the grid. Biaggi qualified a miserable 12th and his only consolation was that he still out did fellow Honda rider Alex Barros who was one position further back. Things weren’t looking for for the two veteran riders.

When the race got started on Saturday the wind was horrible. Not only does the wind play hell with the bikes stability it also blows a fine dust onto the track surface which makes a slick track even slicker. Capirossi took advantage of the Ducati’s killer horsepower to launch off the line while Hayden and Gibernau resumed their turn one game of bumper cars just as they had done in Sepang. Gibernau again came out the better in the shoving match to join Capirossi, Melandri, Rossi, Hayden and Edwards at the front. Slightly further back, Robert Rolfo was running in an astounding seventh which is about ten places higher than the Dunlop shod, one year old Ducati can normally be found. Biaggi and Barros followed up their awful grid positions with equally poor starts and both were well outside the top ten in the first first few laps.

Two of the men who came to the Losail Circuit with such high hopes had their bubbles burst relatively early in the race. First, Biaggi pulled into the pits with yet another mysterious bike problem. As has been the case a few times earlier in the season the Roman made some vague comments which described some kind of handling problem and retired rather than ride around the problem. Whatever the real problem, there is definitely an attitude problem and his leaving the race is bad for Honda, bad for his sponsors and bad for his image. It is also bad for his chances of strengthening his second place in the championship. The second rider to have a problem was Capirossi who ran wide in one of the many sweeping turns and ran through the gravel trap. Given how dusty the outside edges of the track are, combined with the lack of traction on the plastic astro-turf used around the track instead of grass, the Italian was lucky to keep the bike upright. He rejoined the race but the off track excursion put him out of touch with the lead pack and fighting just to stay in the top ten.

Up front, Gibernau took control and tried to break the following pack of Rossi, Melandri, Hayden and Edwards. He pulled a slight gap but then a few laps later Rossi and Melandri had closed right back up again. During this battle , Nicky Hayden turned in an screaming 1.57.903 lap to break the old track record and cut the gap to third place in half. Edwards, meanwhile, was starting to lose the pace and started the slow drift back from the lead pack. Further back, Suzuki mounted Hopkins had to pull in for a new rear Bridgestone.

At half race distance Melandri passes Rossi for second and immediately starts to pressure his Spanish teammate for the lead. With five laps to go Melandri makes a couple of pass attempts but runs wide in both to immediately hand the position back to Gibernau. However, the pressure is apparently too much and Sete runs off the track and into a gravel trap. He manages to keep the bike upright and returns to the track but like Capirossi earlier he has lost the lead pack. He probably also left a big chunk of his self-confidence sitting in that Losail gravel trap. I don’t know how many more times the talented Spaniard can return to the well to replinish his soul before he comes up dry. Riders like Rossi can suck the spirit right out of competitors and every mistake Sete makes while leading races is just handing his rival the siphoning tube.

With Melandri and Rossi out front the pace continues to be fast and Hayden slowly starts to fall back leaving the lead battle to be a mano-a-mano scrap between the two friends: Melandri and Rossi. As we have seen so many times this season Valentino waits until the penultimate lap to make his move passing Marco for the lead. On the last lap Melandri tries a gutsy pass in turn eight but runs a little wide gifting the win to Rossi. The Honda rider recovers before running too far off track and holds onto second place ahead of Hayden.

With Rossi’s 10th win of the season and Edward’s fourth place the Gauloises Yamaha team score enough points to wrap up the Team title. This bucket load of points also helped them to close in even more on the Manufacturer title. Pretty much a perfect weekend for Rossi and the boys but a pretty bleak time for everyone else.

When the points were tallied Max Biaggi still holds onto 2nd but only by two points over Marco Melandri who jumps up to third in the title race. Edwards rises to fourth overall and trails Melandri by five points. Hayden continues to climb up the points table and is now in fifth just two points behind Edwards. Capirossi’s eventual tenth place finish drops him from third to sixth but the race for second overall is still close with only 11 points covering the group from Biaggi to Capirossi.

Other notables finishers were Toni Elias who managed an eighth place finish. The Spanish MotoGP rookie has earned finishes inside the top ten on four different occasions this year all while riding the second string Yamaha. He has also consistently bested his teammate Ruben Xaus (who was 14th at Qater) which is perhaps a better measuring stick for his success. Shinya Nakano brought his Kawasaki home in seventh which isn’t that notable except that it is a finish which is something that has eluded the Japanese rider at the last two races. Alex Barros charged up through the field to eventually finish in ninth. After looking so strong in the middle part of the season Barros needs to finish strong to have any chance of riding in MotoGP next season. Lackluster results now may finally close the book on his long GP career. Suzuki’s continued their trend of frustrating results with Roberts getting 11th and Hopkins the last of the finishers in 17th after his tire change. Rolfo eventually brought the ancient D’Antin Duc across the line in 12th, one spot ahead of Camel Honda replacement rider Shane Byrne. Oddly enough, Byrne ended his final stand-in race on the RC211V in roughly the same ranking as he was earning earlier in the season aboard the Team KR/Proton bike. Food for thought, huh?

Was anyone other than Rossi really a winner in Qatar? Well, Hayden and Melandri both re-closed the gap in the battle for second but neither earned enough points to solidify anything. Biaggi, Capirossi and Gibernau would rather forget about the race all together as none of them accomplished their goals. No one really put in the kind of performance that will help them get a ride next year so it appears everyone will have to hope for better in the greener pastures that are Phillip Island. In the meantime, all the riders came back out of the desert with only Rossi having found any answers.

[image from the MotoGP web site.]

This weekend will be another one that is jammed packed with racing. Since there are a lot of racing I’ll just say a little about each one.

First up, the MotoGP guys return for their second ever race at the Losail circuit in Doha, Qatar. The race is being held on Saturday, in deference to the local Muslim population, which means the bikes, teams and riders have had to get from Malaysia to Qater in just four days to be ready for first practice on Thursday. The 3.36 mile, 16 corner track has a right hand bias with 10 of the turns heading in that direction. Like most of the new tracks built primarily for F1 the track surface is billiard table flat and the asphalt is almost perfectly smooth. In the the only negative thing that can be said about the track, because after all it is in the middle of a freakin’ desert, is that it is hot and sandy. This means that it will again be a race where tires may be the deciding factor. Because the track is so smooth and the circuit is so flowing the bikes can be set up with a relatively soft suspension. This is definitely a good thing because it will help the riders with all important front tire feel which is essential due to the heat and sand. It is especially true in turn 1 were the riders are slowing down from around 200mph for one of the slowest parts of the track. Last year this race was the most dramatic of the season with the now infamous penalty against Rossi’s team for their cleaning his grid position by doing burn-outs with a pit scooter. One of the repercussions of that was the Rossi “curse” which was placed on Gibernau forecasting that the Spainard would never win again. After Sete won at Qatar last year, that prediction has held true. If Gibernau could win at Qatar it would be an amazing turn of events. The favorite going in, other than Rossi, has to be Capirossi who has won two in a row on the resurgent Ducati. Biaggi desperately needs a good race to maintain his spot as #2 in the title chase. Melandri is still riding hurt after his foot injury in Motegi. Hoffman and Bayliss are still out. Jacque is riding the Kawasaki while Byrne is again subbing at Camel Honda. Finally, there should be some more silly season info leaking out this weekend so watch for that news.

Next up is the World Superbike race at Imola. This is the penultimate race for the WSBK series so the riders hoping to claw their way back into the championship points battle better be on the ball at the Santamonica track. Obviously, all eyes will be on the championship battle between Chris Vermeulen and Troy Corser. Both of the Australians will probably be at the forefront all weekend though both have histories of having championship runs fizzle at the end of a season. The other riders to watch at Imola will be the Ducatis. With Bologna only a short hope away, the riders of the Italian equipment will be under a lot of pressure to perform for the bosses. To add to that pressure, the four year history of WSBK coming to Imola shows Ducati have won five of the eight races and that every race has been won by a v-twin. Talk about big expectations! Toseland is probably looking for a job next year and thus needs to impress. Laconi is coming back from injury and needs to settle any lingering doubts among his bosses that he should be their star rider in ‘06. Superstar Lanzi is back with the privateer team but now armed with factory bikes. He’s looking to solidify his position as Laconi’s teammate at the factory next year. The field of honor for this weekend’s event is a historic track with a fantastic layout. The 3.01 mile long track has 16 turns with over half of those being of the left hand variety. Nearly half a lap at Imola is spent at high speed making flip-flop transitions through fast, flowing turns. There are three tight left hand turns and one right hander but otherwise its a high speed circuit. Add in a rough track surface and you have an event where the suspension guys will be earning their money. The always slippery Pirelli tires will get a workout so expect some guys to have tire trouble in the later stages of the first race unless everyone decides to run the hardest thing in the tire truck.

The big finale of the AMA Supermoto series is being held this weekend in Reno and it promises to be a hoot. Both the Supermoto and Supermoto Unlimited classes are yet to crown a champion, though Jeff Ward will almost certainly tie up the former but with double points being paid in the second race there is still a chance for second place Jurgen Kunzel to win the thing. The Unlimited class champ is anyone’s guess as three riders are all bunched within six points of each other: Darryl Atkins, Micky Dymond and Troy Herfoss all have a shot at the title this weekend. Even David Baffeleuf and Robert Loire still have a long shot chance being only 23 and 24 points back respectively. Mark Burkhart has already sewn up the Supermoto Lites championship. The track is a mix of really cool stuff and some pretty boring stuff. The 12 turn, 1 mile track has a small but technical dirt section and a interesting sounding banked turn that goes up onto the side of a building. Sadly, about half of each lap is a point-n-shoot style square going around a city block with three short straights connected by 90 degree right hand turns (why not turn the track around 180 degrees so these turns become left handers and thus give the dirt track guys an advantage?!?). Not exactly the most inspired layout in that sense but with this being in the middle of downtown Reno it is example of the philosophy that Supermoto racing can be set up anywhere. I *love* Supermotos so I suspect the track will prove exciting and the racing will be good. It bad enough that I can’t be there to watch but to add insult to injury OLN isn’t broadcasting the race until mid-November.

Finally, another series is coming to a close this weekend. With fall right around the corner here in Colorado this Sunday marks the season ending race for our local MRA club. As as been the tradition the past few years the final race of the season is being held at Second Creek Raceway out by Denver International Airport. As is typical of the tracks our club races at the place is small. In fact, it is only 1.7 miles in length but with 10 turns crammed into that short space. Despite its size the the layout is actually interesting and it makes for some great racing. Shane Turpin has already tied up the premier Race of the Rockies GTO title but needs to win this weekend to complete a sweep of every race for the season. Likewise, he has already locked up the Race of the Rockies GTU championship as well but a uncharacteristic fourth at Pikes Peak ruined any chance of him sweeping every Race of the Rockies event this year. I’m heading down on Sunday to watch the racing and to catch up with my buddies ‘05 SuperTwins GTO champ Jim Brewer and Modern Vintage GTU points leader Tony Baker.

[image from the Losail Circuit web site.]

I made a blog posting a few nights ago about how the biennial Paris Motorcycle Show was this weekend and that this is the time of the year when all the new models and wild concept bikes are announced. I’ve also posted a few times this summer about how I had planned to buy a new bike this year (though that project has, in both the interest of financial responsibility and the hope that KTM imports the 990 Super Duke in ‘06, been pushed until next year). With those thoughts still bouncing around in my head I thought I’d take a moment to mention some of the 2005 bikes that I think are exceptional but which, for one reason or another, aren’t actually on my list of potential purchases. Consider this a sort of “Coolest bikes of 2005′’ posting for motorcycles which are impractical to own but well worth drooling over.

First, any time I start talking about dream bikes the first thing I always mention is having a full on GP bike for the street. Well, Ducati said in 2004 that they would be making a street version of their MotoGP bike to be called the Desmosedici RR. Unfortunately, it doesn’t appear that the bikes made it from concept to sellable product in 2005 but since rolling models have been displayed at least it has made the leap from drawing board to prototype. Assuming this bike ever becomes reality (and wishfully thinking I could afford the purchase price which will likely be over $50,000) it will be the closest I’ll ever get to riding a Grand Prix machine. I consider this the ultimate on my list of impractical but lust worthy motorcycles. (Now, if only Honda would release a Nicky Hayden replica RC211V in 2007…)

A bike that is much more real, though not much more attainable, is the new $45,000 wonder bike from MV Agusta: the F4 Tamburini. The standard F4 is stunningly beautiful and, unlike so many other salon bikes, brutally effective. With the Tamburini edition, MV has pushed to the absolute limits of what a company can achieve when they aim for a very select (and well heeled) sport bike audience. The bike has all the right modifications in that MV has focused on increasing horsepower, improving handling and removing weight. Perfect. The purchase price is the *only* reason the F4 Tamburini isn’t in my garage.

The Confederate Wraith got a lot of press in 2005 and, unlike nearly every other V-twin powered custom bike, I think it actually deserves it. Both the engineering and visual design are incredible and yet the core philosophy has been to make a bike that not only looks unique but is thrilling to ride. In fact, it is even built to be ridden hard. The Wraith really seems innovative in its styling while distancing itself completely from the choppers that generally come to mind when I think of a v-twin powered custom. I don’t think I would ever drop $50,000 on one but if I had that kind of money laying around I’d at least give it a serious look.

As long as I’m talking about customs, I might as well give some props to the Honda Rune. When it comes to bikes which can be generally classified as cruisers I can only if I find out that it is something different from the norm can I muster even the smallest amount of interest. I don’t mean different in the way that chopper builder TV shows find new themes with which to bolt together crappy, unrideable bikes but different in the sense that someone looked at the basic concept of a cruiser with fresh eyes. That is what appeals to me about the Wraith and it also gives me a huge amount of appreciation for the Rune. The fact that Honda, a company that rarely takes styling risks, are the ones that made it gives me that much more admiration for the accomplishment. Taking the monster motor from the Gold Wing, giving it retro inspired design and then making the whole bike seemingly bigger than life just pegs my cool meter. The fact that it costs half what a Wraith goes for just means it is almost within reach of us mortals.

Another bike that goes in a surprising new direction for a company is the MGS/01 Corsa model that was first shown by Moto Guzzi in 2004. Like Honda building the Rune, having a company like Moto Guzzi which has reputation for building large, clunky engines with long, low profiles suddenly come out with a full on sport bike is shocking. The fact that the MGS still has some characteristic “Guzziness” to it just means that the designers were on their A Game when the penned the bike. The MGS is supposedly being marketed to Guzzi owners who want to go to the track…that has to be a very select group but hopefully this bold step (along with a big infusion of cash from new owner Piaggio) will shatter Guzzi’s previous image and help the company create a reputation for bold and exciting motorcycles and thus gain an entirely new market. As someone who loved the Sport models from afar this MGS comes close to winning me over.

If Moto Guzzi seems to be being metaphorically reborn then Norton has been through the real deal. The name Norton has been missing from the motorcycle market place for nearly thirty years as the brand was one of the many casualties of the wave of Japanese made motorcycles that appeared in the 50s and 60s. Now ex-Norton restorer Kenny Dreer has acquired the rights to the name and has built an entirely new bike which will wear the Norton name. The 952 Commando pays serious hommage to the famous Norton Commando by using a parellel twin engine derived from the original but is otherwise thoroughly modern with fancy Ohlins suspension, massive Brembo brakes, 17″ forged rims, a reasonably light 415 lb dry weight and at $20,000 it is almost reasonably priced. I think this bike is damned near perfect. Unique, beautifully styled, well engineered and the right blend of new mixed with old.

There are also a few honorable mentions I’d like to throw on here at the end:

First is the Aprilia SVX 4.5 supermoto bike. When I first read about the race only model that broke cover last year I put it very near the top of my dream bike list. However, now it is actually being released as a production bike so it isn’t quite so exotic as it seemed earlier this year. Still, while it is probably too specialized to make it onto the list of bikes that I will consider purchasing it is very, very close. A lightweight supermoto bike with 20% more power than the competition and with a 13,000 redline sounds like more fun that you should be allowed to have with your clothes on.

As I mentioned above when talking about the Rune and Commando I have a soft spot for nuevo-retro styling. Bikes which have a distinctly retro look but which have been updated to more modern specs. There are three bikes which definitely fall into that catagory for me and all three are either now available for purchase or will be in the next few months. They are the Triumph Bonneville Thruxton, the newly announced Triumph Scrambler and the Paul Smart 1000 bike from Ducati’s “Sport classic collection. When it comes time to get out the checkbook and lay down cold, hard cash I can’t justify any of these but if I lock that rational part of my brain away then all three just seem so *right*. Fantastic classic styling but with modern engines, modern suspension, modern brakes and modern wheels. They are an excellent balance of the form versus function design philosophy and are all the more tempting since they aren’t outrageously priced like most dream bikes.

When it comes down to buying a new bike, I don’t think any of these bikes would ever make the cut either because they focus too much on styling, focus too narrowly on their market or simply because they are out of focus with my financial reality. Nonetheless, any one of them is more deserving of a TV show than any of the so called “exotic” custom choppers that seem to find their way onto my boob tube. These are my dream bikes for ‘05.

[image from the Confederate Motorcycles web site.]

Well, another page of my MotoGP calendar needs to be turned over and that means it is time for another of my monthly Odds and Ends “catch up” postings. September has been really busy, especially with both silly season and new bike announcements trickling out, so I’ll have to skip a few things just to keep this post from being too long.

First up, is a news item about newly crowned ‘05 MotoGP champion Valentino Rossi. No matter how talented the guy is on the track his real talent is his ability to constantly keep his name in the news. He has monopolized the headlines for most of September as people focused on what he was already doing in 2005, questioned his 2006 plans and speculated about what he would be doing in 2007. For 2005, he has been winning races but has also now had two controversial accidents. The season opener at Jerez with Sete Gibernau and now one with Marco Melandri at Motegi. I’ve covered all this in my MotoGP blog entries but the overriding message is that Rossi continues to keep people guessing. As for 2006, I covered Rossi’s re-signing with Yamaha in my August Odds and Ends posting so that isn’t new news but who will be sponsoring the Italian superstar’s Yamaha has been the topic of endless speculation. Rossi is currently sponsored at Yamaha by Altadis’ Gauloisis cigarette brand but has apparently asked to be run without tobacco sponsorship on this bike in ‘06. The most likely reason for this, other than a possible dislike of tobacco companies, is that he is still flirting with racing a Ferrari F1 car in the near future. The best way to avoid problems with Philip Morris, the long time sponsor of Ferrari, is to make sure he has no contractual obligations to a competing tobacco company. What colors Rossi will be running next year is yet to be decided but the rumors continue to pop up on motorcycle racing news sites. Finally, there is the constant speculation about Vale becoming a F1 driver in ‘07. Again, the flurry of rumors continued all through September. First, Ferrari sent out a press releases claiming Rossi was basically signed as a test rider in 2006 then Rossi responded with a harsh public statement saying no such thing had been signed and finally Ferrari sent out another message which back pedalled considerably from their earlier claims. Presumably Valentino’s manager has been frantically fielding phone calls from Yamaha, Ferrari, Altadis and Philip Morris all month long and I suspect the actual situation probably isn’t clear to any one of these people yet. All the while, Rossi’s popularity is growing ever stronger and his name is showing up in news reports the world over. We’ll see if October brings any answers…

The rest of silly season has been so completely dwarfed by the Rossi story that very little has made the news. It seems that most of the 2005 championship winners (or likely championship winners when you look at the two international series) are already tied up for 2006. In the AMA series, Mladin (Suzuki), Yates (Suzuki), Duhamel (Honda) and Hayden (Kawasaki) are all staying put for at least another year. The biggest news in the AMA paddock has been Eric Bostrom’s move from Ducati to a Supersport/Superstock ride with Yamaha which, in my opinion, seems like a waste of his talent. The MotoGP silly season has been excruciatingly slow to play out this year and many of the top riders are still unsigned for next year. Leading that list is Sete Gibernau who may be back with Movistar Honda or may be riding for Ducati. Max Biaggi will almost certainly stay with Honda but probably won’t be in Repsol colors. Whether he ends up with the Movistar or Camel team is probably dependent on where Sete ends up. Bayliss and Barros, both teammates at Camel Honda, are unsigned for next year as is Suzuki’s Kenny Roberts Jr. It also appears that Yamaha’s Ruben Xaus, Ducati’s Carlos Checa, Kawasaki’s Alex Hoffman, and all the smaller teams riders like Shane Byrne, James Ellison, Franco Battaini and Roberto Rolfo are without contracts for next season. It seems pretty late in the year for this many teams to be without a signed rider but that may be because the current season still has four races to go. I expect all of these riders to have clarification within the next month. As far as World Superbike goes, it seems certain that Corser will be back with Suzuki next year. However, both Ducati riders, Regis Laconi and James Toseland, appear to be up in the air. Likewise, most of the Yamaha riders (Haga, Pitt, Abe, Gimbert) are still looking for jobs. Honda is rumored to be moving Chris Vermeulen to MotoGP so that opens up a seat at Ten Kate, though presumably his teammate Karl Muggeridge will stay on another year. Who knows what is happening with Kawasaki. Again, I suspect a lot of the WSBK riders will be confirmed in the next month but in the meantime you can always follow who is going where on my silly season web page.

Speaking of the AMA series, a tentative 2006 race schedule has already been announced. Combine this early release of dates for next year with the long term commitment that the AMA Pro Racing board announced earlier this summer for the superbike class rules and you’d almost get the idea that they have been listening to the criticism that has been leveled at them for the past decade. These efforts to get things nailed down early and with more solidity mean that teams can better plan and prepare for the upcoming year. Even better than the AMA’s promptness in this regard is the content of the proposed ‘06 series: As late as February of last year there were only nine circuits listed on the ‘05 schedule while the tentative ‘06 schedule already shows 11. Only three ovals are on the list (Daytona, Fontana and PPIR) while the remaining eight rounds will be at true road race tracks. This year the AMA raced at the same three ovals (and eventually at VIR to make ten rounds) so I’m glad to see that the new addition to the schedule is a venue with a true road race track. Racing at more places that don’t just cram a flat infield into a NASCAR oval will help make the sport safer and will keep the racing more interesting. It is only a baby step but adding one new track is definitely a step in the right direction. Now if only they can find a series sponsor!

Speaking of the new road race track the AMA announcement shows a mid-June date for the inaugural Superbike race at the Miller Motorsports Park near Salt Lake City, Utah in 2006. Even better, this is currently slated to be a doubleheader round so it increases the races on next year’s calendar by *two*. I’m excited about this news for two reasons, the first of which is simply that its close enough that I can actually attend which means I should hit three AMA Superbike races in ‘06: Miller Motorsports Park, PPIR and Laguna. Second, the AMA adding another event in the Rocky Mountain region means that they can now seriously consider dropping PPIR event off the schedule in the future. Its a crappy track for road racing and losing it from the ‘07 AMA schedule wouldn’t be much of a loss. Lets hope the clock has started ticking on how much longer the AMA guys will have to suffer through going round and round the PPIR merry-go-round.

Another bit of exciting AMA Superbike news as the announcement at the Kawasaki dealer show that Team Green would be racing the ZX-10R in Superbike next season with Tommy and Roger Lee Hayden as their riders. This again is great news for the sport because it gets the premier superbike class that much closer to having full participation by all the major manufacturers. Additionally, it puts two of the most talented riders in the series into the top class in the series which again increases the excitement of the racing. Both riders deserve a shot at the top prize in AMA road racing and I’m thrilled to see they are getting their shot. Kudos to Kawasaki for taking up the challenge. Now if only Yamaha was so brave.

Also on the domestic front the AMA Pro Racing board made news this month when they handed down fines to motocross riders Mike Alessi and Matt Walker after the Tedesco/Alessi/Walker incident earlier this month at Glen Helen. At issue was an accident in which Alessi appeared to intentionally take out 125cc championship rival Ivan Tedesco but ended up taking himself down as well. Alessi then stood on Tedesco’s still running bike to prevent him from being able to continue the race. Meanwhile Tedesco’s teammate Walker doubled back on the track to knock Alessi of the Kawasaki so Ivan could get back underway. The AMA decided that because of his actions Alessi needed to take a $5,000 hit to his wallet, as well as a disqualification from the entire Glen Helen round and a 12 month probation. Finally, and perhaps the most painful, is that Alessi is also taken out of the running for the AMA Pro Racing Rookie of the Year award. Walker was deemed to have also acted in a way that negatively affects the sport and was given a $2,500 fine, a disqualification from the second moto at Glen Helen and a was put on probation for next year’s Supercross and Motocross seasons. I have mixed feelings about the reprimand for Walker but I’m thrilled to see Alessi get such a heavy penalty after acting so immature. Bravo to the AMA for taking action on this.

Shifting gears completely, let me mention two completely unrelated things to close out this month’s Odds and Ends.

First, Yamaha did an initial announcement of their new bikes earlier this month and included in that a quick photo of the ‘06 FJR1300 sport touring bike. Then all the info associated with the FJR was removed from their web site which caused all sorts of rumors to start flying around the net. Well, at the Paris Motorcycle Show today the European model FJR was officially announced and the mystery was finally revealed: the 2006 FJR will be released with a semi-automatic transmission. This means it will have a conventional gearbox but will use electronics to handle the shifts without the rider having to use a shift lever. It remains to be announced if this auto tranny will be available on US models or not. This will be the first production street bike since the old Hondamatic and Moto Guzzi Convert to have an automatic transmission so this is pretty big news from a technology stand point. However, as a rider I have zero interest in such a thing as shifting gears is a fundamental part of the motorcycle experience for me.

Finally, I wanted to mention that a new motorcycle movie about New Zealander HJ “Bert” Munro has been released Down Under called The World’s Fastest Indian. I doubt this movie will make it to US theaters but it should eventually be available on DVD some time next year. If you haven’t heard of HJ Munro he build Indian motorcycles in the pre-WWII era as land speed racers. Like John Britten, who came along much later, Munru hand build most of his bike’s parts in a little shed in on the south island of New Zealand and was a real innovator at a time when the application of technology to motorcycles was still at a relatively early stage. His story is a fascinating one to anyone interested in the people who pushed the limits of motorcycles during the infancy of the sport. I think it will make a nice addition to my library of motorcycle movies so I hope the DVD does make it to the US so I can buy a copy. Maybe it will inspire me to finally buy that welder for the garage I’ve been dreaming out…

That’s it for this month. Thanks for reading.

[image from the Drive.com.au web site.]

Given my wardrobe of jeans and T-shirts, I’m about as un-savvy when it comes to clothes as someone can possibly be. However, it is my understanding that every year the eyes of the entire fashion industry turn towards a series of industry shows which will define the fads and trends for the following 365 days. It is at these fashion shows that all the movers and shakers of the apparel world show their stuff.

Well, this weekend marks the first of the motorcycle “fashion shows” as the major manufacturers show off their new models, brag about the improvements to their current products and divulge their concept bikes. Tomorrow the doors of the biennial Paris Motorcycle show will open giving all the major bike makers a chance to strut their stuff. In addition to the primary players in Japan and Europe, these motorcycle expos give smaller companies a chance to get industry eyes on their products as well. Up and coming bike makers from Korea and China will be trying to convince the market that their products have improved to the point they can compete with the big players. Specialty one-off makers will be showcasing their custom creations. Even the aftermarket firms will be using Paris as their first chance to stoke up the buzz about their new products. As a result, the Paris show should be all over the motorcycle news for the next month or so.

The Paris motorcycle show is big, perhaps even the biggest in the world since it only happens every other year but it is hardly the only place where new bike announcements will be made. The European companies like BMW, Triumph, Ducati, Aprilia and MV Agusta all like to unveil their marque bikes at European motorcycle shows. If they don’t reveal something new this week in Paris then they made do so in a few weeks at the Intermot show in Munich, Germany which will take place in mid-October. Obviously folks like BMW and KTM tend of focus their biggest marketing efforts at this show since it is in their home office. Likewise, Triumph often keeps at least one surprise in store for the NEC show in Birmingham, England coming up at the end of October. Likewise, all the Italian manufacturers (or at least all the ones that aren’t in the middle of bankruptcy each Fall) should have something to show in mid-November when the annual EICMA show show opens in Milan, Italy. Finally, the Japanese companies are the last to show their trump cards since the Tokyo Motorcycle show in Tokyo, Japan doesn’t happen until spring.

Even before the Fall’s bike expositions begin some of the new bike announcements have already started. So far here are some of my favorites:

Triumph has so far announced three new bikes but only one of them really strikes my fancy: The new 900 Scrambler. This is really just another repackaging of the Bonneville with the upgraded 900cc parallel twin engine put into a new chassis that looks like a 60’s era dual sport bike. The primary visual changes are longer suspension and a set of high mount mufflers. Technically, this bike probably falls into an adventure touring catagory but it will probably be marketed based on it’s retro look rather than it’s off road qualities. That doesn’t matter because, like the Thruxton version of the Bonneville, this new Scrambler just pegs my cool meter regardless of how well it performs on dirt roads or whether it has a usable bash plate. If I had a bigger garage and a more reasonable wife I’d already have one on order…

Another bike that was announced this month is the Aprilia - SVX 4.5. This is a new supermoto bike using the amazing 450cc v-twin engine that was first seen in the world Supermoto championship this past year. This tiny motor cranks out around 60 hp in a package only an inch or two larger than the current range of single cylinder motocross engines. It is the motor that has me so enamoured with the SVX but the styling is impressive as well. I wouldn’t keep my license for a month if I had one of these but, oh, would I love to try one out anyway.

The press release writers at Japan Inc have been busy too. Honda have been flooding the industry with info about the new air bag option on their Gold Wing but that really doesn’t do anything for me. What I did like in the press I saw coming out of Big Red was the new dual exhaust on the CRF250R dirt bike. All the four stroke motorcross bikes have been steadily increasing their power output and decreasing their weight which is what have allowed them to completely overwhelm the 125cc 2-stroke bikes in performance. Adding a second exhaust is increasing weight which normally wouldn’t impress me but the reason I like this is that is shows a concerted effort by Honda to decrease the noise coming from their production dirt bikes. That’s definitely a move in the right direction and I hope the other dirt bike makers take note and follow this trend even if the extra weight actually hampers the performance of the bikes a little.

Suzuki made some tantilizing announcements about their new GSXR 600 and 750 models but didn’t provide enough information to make this earth shattering news. Hopefully some info about their production B-King and the GSX1400 will be forthcoming since those look like interesting bikes. I’m also expecting a lot from the new GSXR600 so hopefully a lot more data on this bike will be available soon as well.

Unlike Suzuki, Kawasaki has already dropped two bombs: The dynamite news is the new 650R twin cylinder sport bike which is presumably slated to replace the venerable 500 Ninja. The bike looks like a reasonable entry level sport bike but the real excitement is that this new motor could end up in an adventure tourer to replace the ancient KLR. Now *that* announcement would shake up parts of the motorcycle world. If the new 650 was an explosion then the news of the new ZX-14 was an A-bomb detonation. This mega-GT bike replaces the ZZR-1200 but does so by super-sizing the engine to 1400cc. This bike will make a great sport touring bike but will make an even better platform for a serious drag racing machine. The Hayabusa riders may want to keep a close eye over their shoulder because the new ZX-14 is coming fast.

Finally, Yamaha made a bunch of new bike announcements to go along with their 50th anniversary celebration but the most exciting are their two top of the line sport bikes. First, the new R6 will bring more horsepower, less weight and better suspension to the 600cc bike party. This new middleweight rocket may be generating nearly 120hp at the rear wheel with a 17,500 rpm redline and a dry weight which could easily be under 350 lbs. It might even be worth giving up the sheer power of a liter bike just for the thrill of zinging a bike up to 17,000 rpm on every ride. Still, no matter how tempting the new R6 is, the new R1LE really does it for me. Fully adjustable Ohlins suspension, a slipper clutch and light weight Marchesini wheels mean this limited edition bike is a serious object of moto lust. Add in the yellow/black Kenny Roberts replica paint job and it is outright motorcycle porn. I didn’t even consider the R1 when looking at a new sport bike this past spring but the R1LE may be the best liter bike available in 2006. Wow.

What all this means is that the next two or three months are the most exciting time to watch the motorcycle industry. The new bikes, those already announced and those that will be shown in the next few weeks, aren’t the only things to watch out for. The concept bikes which are shown each year are always interesting and they often give a glimpse into the future. Just in the past few years concept bikes like the Honda Rune, the Yamaha MT-03, the Suzuki B-King and the Moto Guzzi Griso have all made the leap from prototype to production. So don’t just ignore the hydrogen fuel cell powered, air suspended, hub steered, fully computer controlled robo-bikes that may look completely pointless because they be showing up in show rooms in just a few years.

Finally, I want to point out that a much less glitzy version of these premier motorcycle shows does happen here in the US. The Cycle World International Motorcycle Show doesn’t have the same level of prestige as the Paris or Tokyo shows but it is slowly gaining more importance among the manufacturers so it may yet reach a point where it becomes a showcase for new products. For the moment, its a place where most of the major manufacturers put all their current models on display. The series visits many of the major cities in the US and this year it will be in Denver the weekend of Nov 18-20. If nothing else, its always a good place to stock up on the latest trend in motorcycle T-shirts for next year…

[image from the Made in Tokyo web site.]

The weather in Malaysia this time of the year is always a challenge for the MotoGP teams and riders. When its raining, its dumping water like only a monsoon can. When its not raining its so hot and humid it still feels like a steam room. Temperatures over 100 aren’t unusual and track temperatures can easily reach 125 degrees. Racing in this kind of sauna means that the riders have an even greater reliance on the tires than normal. As a result, my coverage of the Sepang race has as much to do with the rubber as the riders.

The first sign of this came in the first practice sessions. Despite never having visited the podium at Sepang before, the Bridgestone tires seemed to have a big advantage from the first time wheels turned on the track. As if the hot temperatures and a rain shower on Friday weren’t making life hard enough for the tire technicians there was the added problem of a dirty track. Unlike past years, it seemed that dirt had somehow embedded itself in the track surface and significantly reduced tire traction. The lap times in practice were slower than expected and it was the Bridgestone bikes that rose to the top. In fact, qualifying showed just how big the tire technology gap was in terms of dealing with the unique situation found in Malaysia. Four of the top five bikes were wearing ’stones including pole sitter Capirossi. Gibernau managed to snag second on his Michelins but Hopkins in third and Nakano in fourth were close behind to make it four different bike brands in the top four positions. Anytime the Kawasakis and Suzukis are on the front two rows you know that either hell has frozen over or the tires are dictating the results.

When the boiling hot sun rose on Sunday there were rumors that Michelin had brought in a special container of tires on Saturday night to address the problems found during practice on Friday. These new tires gave a new lease on life to many of the riders as Gibernau topped morning practice with Hayden in third and Rossi in sixth. As long as these new tires could go the distance it looked like the Michelin riders could line up for the race without bringing the proverbial knife to a gun fight.

The race was slow to get underway because the starting lights appeared to malfunction but when things finally went green it was Loris Capirossi that won the drag race to turn. Second place was a four way traffic jam as Melandri on the far inside and Hayden in the middle of the track were split by Gibernau who went in too hot pushing Hayden out into Checa’s space. Hopkins, who was out run off the line on his underpowered Suzuki and was on the outside of the track, got shoved out wide by Checa. The whole gaggle had to work hard to keep everything under control and fortunately no one went down. Melandri was gifted by the turn one chaos and came out of turn two in second place with Nakano in third and Hayden recovering to fourth. Two laps later, Gibernau was again rubbing on Hayden to make the pass into the top four but at the end of the same lap tried a banzai passing move on Nakano for second only to crash and take them both out. This makes for two DNFs in a row for both of those riders. A lap later, Nakano’s temporary teammate Jacque was out with a mechanical problem. Giving Kawasaki another disappointing weekend of having to pack up their pit space early.

As things calmed down, Melandri started to slide backwards while Rossi moved forward. Just a few laps in and it appeared the battle was going to boil down to a firefight between Capirossi, Rossi and Hayden. Those three riders pulled a gap over the following riders and all of them seemed to be running similar lap times. Just over half race distance Rossi made the pass on Hayden for second and then continued past Capirossi for the lead. Rossi was able to up the pace but both following riders were able to stay with him. As the laps wound down, Capirossi used the power of the Ducati to move back to the front, Hayden began to lose the pace and slide backwards and Carlos Checa started to charge forward on his Ducati. With just a few laps to go, the front pair spread out as Capirossi pulled a half second a lap on Rossi. The following pair closed up with Checa making two successive pass attempts on Hayden but ran wide on both allowing Hayden back through. On the penultimate lap Checa made pass stick on Hayden and then quickly closed the gap to Rossi. On the last lap, Capirossi cruised to a comfortable second consecutive victory while Checa came up on turn short on making the pass on Rossi. Rossi’s second place earned him the points necessary to win his fifth premier class title and his seventh world championship.

Hayden came on home fourth while Melandri struggled with his seriously injured foot for a fantastic fifth. Biaggi has another puzzling weekend to finish sixth. The Bridgestone’s carried Suzuki to two top ten finishes, a seventh for Roberts Jr and a ninth for Hopkins, the two riders split by Honda mounted Alex Barros. Colin Edwards rounded out the top ten.

Ultimately, it was a Bridgestone weekend. Some riders not normally seen in the top ten all had strong finishes. Had both Nakano and Jacque not been taken out early, though through no fault of their own, they were on course to improve the Bridgestone record even further. Having two Ducatis on the podium is fabulous for the series but only time will tell if this is an improvement in the bikes, the riders or just a tire advantage in the unique Malaysian conditions. As much as I’d like to believe otherwise I’m fairly certain the later explains the top ten finishes for the two Suzukis.

As for the Michelin riders their tires just couldn’t handle the heat. Both Rossi and Hayden faded in the final third of the race while the two Ducatis were still turning consistent lap times. Nicky’s retreat from second to fourth is disappointing but I’m willing to cut him a lot of slack since he was the top Honda and the second Michelin rider behind Rossi. Sure, he still has some room for improvement but I don’t think he’s to blame for missing the podium in Sepang. Besides, I still think the real battle for him is to continue to beat Biaggi so he can keep his Repsol ride next year. He definitely managed that. Finally, I want to reiterate how amazing it is for Melandri to bring his Honda home in fifth considering he has thirty stitches hold his foot together. MotoGP racing in general requires amazing endurance but doing so in the Malaysian heat with a big hole in your foot is extra-ordinary. Melandri showed back his 250 days that he has an amazing capacity to race through injury and he has proved that one again.

With the Asian sun setting over Kuala Lumpur, its obvious that Capirossi is hot but Rossi is positively radiating. Seven championships and most of them with dominant performances is astounding, including his sewing up this year’s championship with four races left to run. I think Rossi will make it an even eight next year so the other riders better hope the rumors are true that Rossi will go to F1 in ‘07…

[image from the MCN web page.]

Things are big in Malaysia. The buildings are big, the temperatures are big, the distances are big and even the economy is big. With the world’s largest building, the Petronas Tower, Kuala Lumpur has bested the world when it comes to being big. The country has big religion, with 52% of the population being Muslim as well as a large Buddhist and Hindu segments of the populace. The place also has big weather with September forecast varying between huge monsoon rain storms and sweltering high temperatures with stifling humidity. Yup, just about everything is big.

More importantly, for the topic at hand, the Sepang circuit that is hosting this weekend’s Malaysian Grand Prix is a big facility. Not content to have a world class race track it also contains a fancy hotel, a big shopping mall and even a golf course. Even the track itself is big running 3.447 miles in length and containing 15 of the widest variety of corners on nearly any track in the world. The surface is wide and smooth with a mix of slow turns, fast turns, straights and even elevation changes. There are two long straights that start and end a lop and both mean that acceleration and braking power are needed but that is overshadowed by the requirement for great suspension action in the sweeping turns. Turn three, for example, is taken in 4th gear while rocketing the bike from 65 to 155mph, As if the sweeping turn wasn’t hard enough on the front tire, the wideness of the track means that riders can take a long sweeping entrance into the turn meaning the bikes are pushing that front for that much longer. Oh, and turn three isn’t the only fast curve. Turns five and twelve are both taken in third at around 100. Both of these turns, particularly turn twelve, spice things up even more by cresting hills. The riders will need a sweet suspension setup to deal with having the front go light while charging over a hill banked over at a hundred per. The track is big in right side tire wear too as ten of the fifteen turns on the track are right-handers.

The riders are in for a big weekend as well. First and foremost, this is the next big chance for Valentino Rossi to take the title. A top four finish, assuming Biaggi wins the race, is all that is needed for Vale to take home the championship. Since he’s won here two years in a row he is once again the favorite. The excellent handling characteristics of the Yamaha should really shine in Malaysia so expect Rossi to use this in the sweeping turns to make passes.

Speaking of Rossi, this weekend is going to be a big test for Marco Melandri’s courage. Despite 30 odd stitches in his right foot after being taken out at Motegi by Rossi the Honda rider showed up at Sepang to race. Given the degree to which the weather can sap the strength of even perfectly fit riders, it will be amazing if Melandri can even race. If he does run the main event it will be in an effort to get whatever points he can since he is still in the seven rider battle for second place overall in the series.

There is some big motivation over in the Ducati camp as Loris Capirossi is fresh off the team’s maiden win of the season. What’s more, Ducati has never done particularly well here in Sepang so Capirossi is looking to break the drought this weekend. If the Ducati can do well in Malaysia it will also mean that Capirossi can win at a non-Bridgestone track which will be a big statement indeed.

Finally, this weekend is also represents a big break for a few riders. First, Shane Byrne is been asked to ride the Camel Honda to fill in for the injured Bayliss. A week ago, it looked like Byrne was locked up in a contract with KTM who would no longer be racing this season, effectively ending the Brit’s chance continue racing. Now he is not only back in the paddock but has a multi-race deal to ride a semi-factory Honda which is perhaps the most coveted ride in the pits. Clearly this is a big chance for him. Second is Olivier Jacque who is getting another opportunity to ride the factory Kawasaki. However, rather than bring a wild card he is instead substituting for Alex Hoffmann who injured his foot in his recent accident in Japan. Since there is a big chance that it may rain, Jacque may be another chance to show off his rain riding skills after his big finish in China earlier this year.

Not everything is big, though. There are some little things too…

The first little bit of information is that James Ellison is back from injury and will be again riding the WCM Blata bike this weekend. Since the team still doesn’t have their new Blata engineered V6 Ellison will again be riding last years bike which is little more than a fancy Yamaha R1. As a result, he has little chance of a good finish.

There is also little hope for Max Biaggi keeping his title hopes alive. Even if the Honda rider could pull out a win over Rossi this weekend, it is very likely that his countryman will still finish close enough to the front to tie up the title. Biaggi is now racing to secure his fourth championship runner-up finish (and his seventh top three). If ever the FIM decides to retire someone’s number, it should be to hang up the #2 in honor of Max.

Finally, there is little rest of the weary. The Sepang race comes one week after the race in Japan and the Losail race is less that one week away after this one finishes up. Expect this run of three straight fly-away races to test the endurance of the riders and the organization of the teams.

All in all, it should be a big weekend of racing…

[image from the Sepang Circuit web site.]

As I mentioned in my post-race review on Tuesday this past weekend’s race at Motegi was overshadowed by the crash between Rossi and Melandri. I think everyone that saw the race will agree that the accident was Rossi’s fault as he ran into the back of Melandri’s Honda while braking into the corner which then took them both out. Even Rossi has admitted the crash was his fault, as least to the degree that any interview or press release will ever directly state such a thing. Even though Melandri was one of the two people with a mathematical chance of challenging Rossi for the 2005 MotoGP championship, I also think that most people will also agree that there wasn’t anything inherently malicious in the accident. Rossi made a mistake and ran into his countryman but he did not seem to be deliberately aiming to take him out. As a result, the accident has been declared a “racing incident". In most cases, this would end the matter…

…but in this case, it doesn’t just stop there. First, there is the fact that Melandri was in the title hunt and thus had the most to lose in the event of a DNF. Since Rossi could basically sit out the rest of the season and probably still win the championship a catastrophic accident wouldn’t necessarily end his championship hopes but the Motegi DNF for Melandri did close the door on his ‘05 title aspirations. That means the issue deserves a deeper look to make sure it is addressed fairly.

Then there is the fact that Melandri was injured when the footpeg of his bike dug into his right foot. Any time a rider is seriously injured in an accident, especially when that accident was caused by another rider, the issue should be examined. Rossi wasn’t injured and will be racing this coming weekend in Malaysia but Melandri’s taking part is still up in the air.

Third, there is the issue of the opening race of the season at Jerez when Rossi hit Sete Gibernau in the last corner and punted the Spaniard into the gravel trap. Rossi went on to win the race and to celebrate wildly while Gibernau fought to get his bike back on track and to finish second. That crash was determined a “race incident” by the governing body. As the saying goes “Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me.” One racing incident is an accident but making a habit of it means dangerous riding. Time to look closer yet at what happened at Motegi.

So the FIM, the mostly Italian ruling body of MotoGP has their Race Direction committee take a look at the footage and then puts out a press release saying that a protest of the incident by Honda charging Rossi with dangerous riding was unfounded. Okay, incident reviewed and ruled on. End of story, right?

Well, I don’t think so. There aren’t any provisions in the FIM’s rule book for protesting the FIM itself but I think it is about time it happens. Want some data to back up that accusation? Look at this timeline of a select few events from the last decade:

On Oct 25th, 1998 - Italian Loris Capirossi on the Italian Aprilia 250GP bike crashes into his teammate Japanese rider Tetsuya Harada on the last turn of the last lap at the last race of the year in Buenos Aires, Argentina. The accident puts both riders into the gravel but Capirossi is able to get back on the asphalt and finish in second place. Harada can’t get back underway and ends the race in the gravel trap. Coming into the race, Capirossi held a three point advantage over Harada but a win from the Japanese rider would have earned him the 1998 250GP championship. After the accident, Capirossi was initially disqualified but then his second place finish was re-instated after review by the FIM. In the end, Capirossi won the 250 title that year and was not penalized for causing the accident.

Now jump forward five years to Oct 5th of 2003 at Motegi, Japan. American John Hopkins gets into the first corner on the first lap way to hot and rams his Suzuki into the Japanese made Yamaha of Carlos Checa and the Italian made Ducati of Troy Bayliss. All three riders go down. Race Direction determines that Hopkins was riding in an irresponsible manner and he is given a one race suspension.

That same day at the same track, Japanese rider Makoto Tamada on a Honda is racing for a podium finish in front of his home crowd. In the closing laps, he makes a close pass on fellow Honda mounted Spaniard Sete Gibernau to take third place. Gibernau is bumped off track, doesn’t fall down and returns to finish forth. Race Direction looks at the evidence available and decrees that Tamada’s pass was an example of irresponsible riding. He is disqualified from the race and his third place finish nullified.

Then jump forward to the same track one year later. On Oct 19th, 2004 Italian Loris Capirossi charges up the inside of the first corner and then can’t get his Ducati slowed down. He slams into John Hopkins (Suzuki) which starts a crash that eventually collects Americans Kenny Roberts (Suzuki), Colin Edwards (Honda) and Nicky Hayden (Honda). Honda’s Max Biaggi, also on a Honda, also goes down. Biaggi is in the points battle for the championship and the crash effectively ends his chance of going for the title in ‘04. Both Hopkins and Roberts are injured in the crash. Race Direction reviews the film and announces it is just a racing incident and no penalty is warranted.

Earlier this year, at the first race of the season on April 10th there was the now famous incident at Jerez. Valentino Rossi in his second year on the Yamaha is racing with his old nemesis Honda mounted Sete Gibernau for the race win. In the last corner of the last lap Rossi goes up the inside hard on the brakes and runs into Gibernau which pushes the Spaniard off track and into the gravel. Rossi goes on to win and proceeds to celebrate quite wildly. Gibernau gets back on track and finishes an angry second. The FIM overrules a protest from the Movistar Honda team and assesses no penalty against the Italian.

Now this past weekend, Sept 18th there were two incidents. First, in the 250GP race, Spaniard Jorge Lorenzo on a Honda is trying to come back from forth place to get on the podium. On the last lap he tries to pass both Honda mounted Dani Pedrosa and Aprilia mounted Alex de Angelis for second. While hard on the brakes, Lorenzo gets past Pedrosa but then runs into the back of de Angelis, taking them both out. Both riders are okay and de Angelis remounts to earn a seventh place finish. Race Direction determines this was a case of “irresponsible riding” and issues a one race ban to Lorenzo.

Finally, there is the incident that inspired this blog entry where during the MotoGP race at Motegi Valentino Rossi crashes his Yamaha into the back of championship contender Marco Melandri ’s Honda on lap thirteen. Both riders are out of the race but Melandri also suffers a foot injury. Movistar Honda again issues a protest to the FIM and again Race Direction deems the protest without merit.

Alright, I think the message is clear: Don’t mess with the Italians! Capirossi has gotten away with torpedoing riders twice including doing so once to help win a championship. Now Rossi has done the same. If a Japanese or American rider is involved in a less severe accident, a one race suspension or a disqualification is handed out faster than you can say “unfair application of the rules". Do I think Rossi deserves a penalty for Sunday’s crash? No. It was clearly a racing accident. However, if the FIM is going to penalize Jorge Lorenzo for a similar accident at the same track on the same day then I think they have to be fair in their rulings and penalize Rossi as well. Otherwise, they need to apologize to Lorenzo for chastising his accident while letting Rossi get away with the same thing. Either that or Lorenzo needs to quickly apply for Italian citizenship.

[image from the Yahoo Italy Sports web site.]