Alanf's blog...

This weekend will be a great weekend of racing. For the first time this year, there will be three different race series I can watch in one weekend:

First, the MotoGP season holds its third round at the new Shanghai Circuit in China. This track promises to make for some exciting racing for a few different reasons. For one thing it has the longest straight of all the tracks on the MotoGP calendar at nearly 3/4 of a mile in length. The long length of tarmac will mean everyone better bring their horsepower to the 3.3 mile circuit. Honda probably has an advantage in this arena. However, the teams can’t just focus on going fast because the designers threw in four 180+ degree tight turns including one that is nearly a full 360 degrees. Some of these turns are long enough that the bikes stay leaned over on the right side of the tire for a long time. The fourteen turns on the track mean that a good handling bike, like the Yamaha, may have an advantage. Finally, this is a new track so the teams will have to figure out tires (Michelin is basically bringing one of everything since they don’t yet know what the tire wear will be like), suspension settings, fuel usage, gearing, computer settings and lines around the track. The team that can get all these myriad details sorted out the fastest will have an advantage. This may be a place where teams like Suzuki, Kawasaki and Ducati can shine. I doubt they’ll close the gap to the top Honda and Yamaha teams but they can show their stuff within their own competition to be the best of the rest. It will be very interesting to see which riders are the fastest after the first practice and whether those same riders are still among the fastest in the last practice session, as it will show whether riders are slowly and methodically building their speed or if they get up to their max speed relatively quickly and then just fine tune. Any rider that can get up to speed quickly will then be making tire, gearing, suspension and computer changes that match the speed they are likely to run in the race. Everyone else will tune as they go and may well find new problems showing up if their race time is faster than their final practice time.

A more predictable situation will present itself this weekend when the AMA series returns to California Speedway in Fontana, CA. Unfortunately for the rest of the field, Fontana has been the sole domain of Mat Mladin for the past two years. With Mladin coming off two devastating victories at Daytona and Barber, things don’t look good for anyone hoping to break Mladin’s streak at California Speedway. Despite being built in the middle of a NASCAR oval, California Speedway is a reasonably interesting track…at least as interesting as a flat, concrete wall lined bull ring can be. The track designers managed to squeeze 21 turns into the two mile NASCAR track, including some high speed left hand sweepers that give the gutsy riders a chance to show their stuff. From what we saw at Daytona, this is going to favor the Suzukis, so I predict another Suzuki sweep in at least one of the two races. Those fast sweepers put a premiun on a rider’s ability to trust his front tire and that is a weakness for both the long wheelbase Ducati and the still developing Honda.

The final race of the weekend is the series opener for our local MRA roadrace series at Pueblo Motorsports Park in Pueblo, Colorado. Of the tracks in Colorado, Pueblo may be the most interesting. It is among the longest of our tracks and has the longest straight. The track is actually part of a motorsports complex which means that in addition to watching roadracing, you can ride dirt bikes, camp and even watch drag racing in the evenings after the racing. As for the races themselves, the usual suspects should dominate: Shane Turpin, Ricky Orlando, Dan Turner, Mike Applegate, Jon Glaefke, Jim Brewer, Dennie Burke, Mark Nudelman, Marty Sims and Rich Deeming. While there have been some impressive new riders joining the series in the past couple of years, no one has yet been able to step up in the premier Race of the Rockies class to challenge the veterans like Shane Turpin, Ricky Orlando and Dan Turner. In addition to the weekend’s MRA road races, the MRA also has a Supermoto class which runs on Saturday afternoons once the morning practice is over, which makes for an even more interesting race weekend. ‘Course all this assumes that our unseasonably late snow fall doesn’t force the cancellation of the event.

Because of the weather I won’t be driving down to Pueblo for the MRA races. Instead, I’ll be spending Sunday curled up on the couch with two foot of snow outside and the TV tuned to Speed….

[image from the Shanghai Circuit web site.]

This coming weekend will be another session of fighting with the big, round, black deamon from hell. Yes, its true, no sooner than I got all my tires mounted back in February I walked out one morning to find the front tire on the DRZ was flat.

Specifically, I found that the last time I rode the DRZ I ripped the valve stem out of the tube in the front tire. I remember that I was practicing stoppies on the dirt road leading to our house but a couple of things still make this flat tire surprising: 1) I was trying to brake hard on a loose dirt road so I’m surprised it generated enough stopping power to slip the tire on the rim and 2) I suck at stoppies so I’m surprised I was able to apply that much braking force without falling down.

Nonetheless, when I went to put air in the flat front tire, I heard the tell-tale sound of air hissing out into the rim rather than filling up an inner tube. This past weekend, I broke the bead on the tire and fished out the tube to find that, sure enough, the valve stem was no longer attached. Now I’ll have to completely remove the tire so that I can extract the stub of the valve stem. While I have the tire off, I’ll see if I can install a rim lock as the front tire on the DRZ400S doesn’t have one (that lack of rim lock no doubt contributed to the ease with which the tire rotated on the rim).

In addition to spending even more time fighting with tire irons I’ll get to add to that pleasure the delicate task of trying not to pinch the inner tube. The one bonus is that when I’m finished installing the new tube and remounting the tire I’ll get to try static balancing the tire on my new Rod Neff tire balancing stand which is shown in the background. (Don’t worry, I’m aware the balancing a dirt bike tire is overkill but I’d like to get some practice before I start doing tires where balancing is important.) I bought the adjustable stand that can also be broken down flat for easy storage. Its a well made unit and, assuming I get around to buying the $BMW$ adaptor for my GS wheel, I should be able to now mount and balance the tires on all the bikes in my garage. My buddy Jeff just bought a motorcycle tire changer from Harbor Frieght which I need to go check out to see if it will fix the problem of trying to juggle three tire irons while holding a tire flat and without bending the expensive brake rotors…as if I don’t have enough toys in the garage!

Ultimately, I’m just trying to find a way to make tire changes more interesting because at the moment I’m tired of fighting with the damned things and summer is just beginning!

[image from my photo collection.]

“I still think that riding motorcycles is much, much more than a sport; pretty close to religion.”
– Keith Code

This past weekend was the American debut of a documentary film made in Canada about multi-time AMA champ Miguel Duhamel. The film Adrenaline Rush, as with many other religious functions, was shown this past Sunday on SpeedTV.

The primary focus of the film was the 2003 AMA series, the year in which Miguel won his 41st AMA Supersport race at Brainerd. As if winning 41 of anything isn’t impressive enough that race win emphasized what a determined racer Duhamel is since a crash at Infinion Raceway six weeks earlier had broken his left collarbone in three places. The fix for the shattered collarbone was to insert a pin to strengthen the bone while it healed. The pin didn’t stay in place and by mid-season was protruding out of the bone enough to pierce the skin. After an attempt to hammer the pin back into place failed, Duhamel just taped foam over the pin, took antibiotics to prevent an infection and raced anyway. Taken as a second chapter to his stunning 1999 Daytona victory after a crash at Loudon the previous season left him with a crushed left femur, the collarbone stories shows just how much Duhamel wants to race and to win. Looking at his record: 32 career Superbike wins, 5 Daytona 200 victories, 41 Supersport wins, 9 Formula Xtreme wins, 1 Superstock win, the 1995 Superbike championship, five Supersport titles (1991, 1993, 1995, 1996 and 1997) and his being the 2004 Formula Xtreme champ shows just how successful he’s been.

This is basically the story that is told in the biographical film. There are home movies of a young Miguel riding mini-bikes with his siblings, race footage from many of the key races in 2003 and 2004, interviews with family members and friends and one-on-one interviews with Miguel himself. Some of the film footage, like the post race film from Barber in 2004 where he was taken out in a multi-bike accident with Ben Bostrom, shows the less glamorous side of Miguel. It clearly shows how he tried to force a red flag after the crash in an attempt to get back into the race. While this is understandable from the viewpoint of a racer, its of questionable ethical value when considering those still in the race. This film clip also shows how that very personal decision on Duhamel’s part affects both his girlfriend and mother who were watching the race.

Ultimately, these personal glimpses are what really make the documentary a decent film. Duhamel’s personality is entertaining and getting this view into the man behind the visor makes many of the trials and tribulations that much more human. Finally, I doubt a film about a less charismatic rider would be nearly as enjoyable to watch, and it would be very difficult to find a rider that has experienced as many highs and as many lows as Miguel has during the course of his career. Both of these factors make him the perfect candidate for such a film. While this isn’t the greatest motorcycle documentary ever made, that honor is still held by On Any Sunday, it offers some great insight into motorcycle road racing in particular and into one of the AMA’s greatest in particular.

For the moment, a trailer for the movie is available online. Check the SpeedTV program schedule to see if the program will be broadcast again.

[image from the Daytona International Speedway web site.]

Back in December, I did a blog entry about an ex-Colorado racer named Nicky Wimbauer who has gone on to race this season at an international level in the newly created World 600 Superstock championship. This class, along with World Supersport and World Superstock, are support classes for the European rounds of the World Superbike series. It is a more “stock” class when compared to the well established World Supersport class (which are stock framed and “superbike” engined 600cc bikes) and was specifically created to bring new talent into the series by giving young riders under the age of 21 that have risen to the top in their national series an arena for further competition. What makes this particularly exciting is that some of the existing World Superbike and World Supersport teams have already started to support the new class. Belgian based Moto 1, a successful Suzuki supported team in World Supersport, picked Nicky as their rider in World 600 Superstock and have thus given him a great opportunity to join the WSBK circus aboard a competitive bike.

This past weekend was the first race of the class as the World Superbike series opened its European dates with a race in Valencia, Spain. Wimbauer had some challenges in qualifying and ended up 17th on the grid for the start of the race. Once the green flag fell, he showed why Moto 1 put such faith in him by charging his way through the pack to finish eighth roughly 20 seconds down on the leader. The field ahead of him consisted of two Frenchmen, two Spaniards, a German and two Italians most of whom were older than the 17 year old Wimbauer. If he continues to ride smart, finish this well and to learn at each race you can be sure we’ll see him on a Superbike very soon.

You can follow the series and Mr. Wimbauer’s results on the Official World Superbike web site.

[image from the Nicky Wimbauer web site.]

This past weekend’s superbike races would seem, at first glance, to have been a story of old timers sticking it to the youngsters. In both the World Superbike and the AMA races, 30+ year old veterans won handily over a field that included both series regulars and bright young stars. Likewise, both riders took early commanding leads in two races each and those double wins put both in positions atop the points table with large enough margins to miss a race without threatening their advantage. Impressive stories to be sure. However, I found that the race reports show an equally interesting development further down the podium.

…but first, the race reviews:

In World Superbike, it was another Troy Corser weekend. As in the first two rounds, TC was unbelievable all weekend. In both races, he jumped out to an early lead and held that till the finish. The focus therefore shifted to what was happening behind him. In race 1, that was highlighted by a crash-fest. It all started before the race when Ducati mounted title contender Regis Laconi crashed in morning practice and was too concussed to race. In the race, nearly all the Australian riders, with the exception of Corser and Vermeulen, visited the gravel including Pitt, McCoy and Martin. German Neukirchner had a particularly nasty highside on his Honda early in the race that sent Muggeridge and Lanzi off track with Italian Lanzi breaking his collarbone. The later stages of the race boiled down to a fascinating battle for second between Honda’s Vermeulen and Yamaha’s Abe. The Pirelli tires appeared once again to be crap and in the second half of the race all the riders were sliding everywhere. This finally bit Abe and sent him down the track, handing third place to Suzuki’s Kagayama. Another notable finish was Frankie Chili crossing the line in seventh just two weeks after breaking his collarbone in Australia.

The second WSBK race started as a mirror of the first with Corser clearing off early. Vermeulen put up a better fight and stayed a little closer but it still seemed TC could manage the gap, upping the pace if necessary. Once again the focus turned to the Australian youngster in second place this time because Kawasaki’s Walker made a surprise appearance at the front. As with Abe in Race 1, Walker put a tremendous amount of pressure on Vermeulen. Also as in the first race, it appeared that the Honda used up the rear tire sooner than the following bikes which made Vermeulen’s job of holding off Walker all the more difficult. In the end, the talented Honda rider did just that to take home another second place trophy. Walker performed brilliantly to get onto the podium after struggling in the early races of the season. The other big surprise for race two was Ben Bostrom’s fantastic sixth place. It appears the Renegade Honda rider may finally be getting the new bike sorted out.

In the weekend’s AMA Superbike races, the headline was Mat Mladin’s continued romp towards a sixth title. In just the second race weekend of the season, Mladin has already pulled a 22 point advantage in the points chase. This is shades of seasons past where Mladin creams ‘em early in the season and plays it smart in the second half, while others come apart under the pressure. In both races, Mladin lead immediately and just pulled away throughout the race, turning laps a second a lap faster than anyone else. The trailing pack was limited to Suzuki teammates Yates and Spies, as well as Ducati’s Hodgson. Yates was easily the second fastest guy of the weekend, able to gap the following riders but not catch Mladin. The race for third in the first race boiled down to a wonderful battle between the ex-World champion Hodgson and the superbike rookie Spies. At the end, Spies threw down an amazing move through traffic and clinched the final podium spot.

The second day’s Superbike race at Barber Motorsports Park started with another rocket maneuver from Mladin. Second was briefly a battle between Yates and Hodgson with Yates eventually pulling a gap but then having a rear tire vibration which forced a pit stop, handing second place to Hodgson. The focus then trailed back down to Spies who was in a see-saw battle with Honda’s Duhamel. This fight came down to the last lap, when Duhamel pulled a brave last corner pass but was then pushed wide allowing Spies to sneak back underneath for the win. Another exciting race for the rising star from Texas.

The only AMA support race that was televised, the 600 Supersport race, was a thrilling race as well. Yamaha’s Jamie Hacking was on fire all weekend and took off from pole position (both times actually, as there was a red-flag induced re-start) with Kawasaki’s Hayden brothers in close pursuit. The race pace was very fast which eventually caught Roger Lee out causing him to run off the track and lose touch with the two front runners. Tommy kept pressure on the Yamaha and finally made a run at him on the last corner of the last lap but came up a little too short to make the move. Jamie’s victory ties up the points battle. Particularly noticeable in the race was how slow the Suzuki GSXR600s are this year. Despite some hard riding by the racers, the first Suzuki was in 10th place. Yamahas and Suzukis filled the first nine positions. Its time for Suzuki to put some of its GSXR1000 engineers to work on the smaller bike. Mention should also be made of Yamaha mounted privateer Robert Jensen who finished seventh. That is a phenomenal placing for a privateer in a class so loaded with factory backed talent and it definitely highlights the guy’s riding skill.

With all that out of the way, my focus will be on the two young stars that showed their metal through some extremely tough races. On the World Superbike stage in Valencia, Spain that star was Chris Vermeulen. While he didn’t quite have the speed needed to challenge Troy Corser, he survived two grueling race long battles with more experienced racers. In race one, it was ex-GP winner Norik Abe and in race two it was ex-GP racer Chris Walker. Both racers applied considerable pressure and in both cases, appeared to have tires in better condition and thus better mid-corner speed. Despite these advantages, Vermeulen kept his wits and rode a superb race to beat both of them. I’m sure his previous World Supersport experience really helped here since that class is all about racing in a tight pack. I also believe that him continuing to get this experience, as he did last year in Superbike, will forge him into a better and better racer. The guys that lead races from the front may become better technical racers but its the guys that know how to fight it out that build a skillset that helps them in the long run. Expect Chris V to be replacing one of the under-performing MotoGP riders next season.

In the AMA Superbike series, this same kind of performance was turned in by Ben Spies. He was able to go to school with ex-WSBK champ and ex-GP rider Neil Hodgson and then in race two do the same thing with multi-time AMA champ Miguel Duhamel. Both of these riders are smooth, precise and smart. All attributes that, should they rub off, will be useful to Spies throughout his career. The fact that the Suzuki rider bested both veterans in their respective races shows he is a quick study and that he has bucket loads of talent. If anyone is going to be able to step up and challenge Mladin this season, it may well be Spies as he continues to grow as a rider.

Bravo to both these riders, as well as the two old guard masters who should be their targets.

[image from the Italian Motorsport web site.]

Yamaha and Honda both lay claim to the title of best motorcycle company based on their engineering prowness in the battlefield of the MotoGP series. For the past two seasons, it has been obvious that these two companies can out research, out design, out innovate, out test and out spend all the other manufacturers in their quest to build the fastest prototype racing motorcycles in the world. The Honda RC211V and Yamaha M1 have dominated for two years and look to continue that in 2005. However, if the yard stick for measuring a motorcycle company’s success is production racing, then this year it appears Suzuki has all comers covered.

This weekend there are three different major Superbike races: World Superbike at Valencia Spain, AMA at Barber Motorsports Park in Alabama and British Superbike at Mallory Park. In two of those series the Suzuki GSXR 1000 has already stamped its authority in just the first few rounds. In the third, the chances are good that Suzuki will soon flex its muscle. As I said in a posting last month about Suzuki’s strong showing early in the year the Marketing department at Suzuki is set to have a busy year.

Lets start with the bad news: The British Superbike Series. After being the fastest guy at the first pre-season test for the BSB series, Suzuki rider and defending champ John Reynolds had a serious crash which resulted in a shattered right leg. Amazingly, he has come back in an amazingly short time and ridden at the first races of the season but he has been in such a poor state of fitness that he couldn’t hang with the front runners. With each passing day, his leg is mending and he will soon be back to fitness. Whether he will be able to challenge the current season’s undefeated race winner, Honda’s Ryuichi Kiyonari, this weekend at Mallory Park remains to be seen but you can be sure JR will run up front once he’s healthy. Reynold’s young team mate, Scott Smart, still has some learning before he’ll be a title contender but what better teacher than a two time BSB champion? Expect the Suzuki name to be back on the podium later in the season.

In World Superbike action the races have been a Suzuki ad as the two Alstare Corona riders, Troy Corser and Yukio Kagayama, have lead every race by a proverbial mile. The dominance of the GSXR1000 is shocking, considering that World Superbike has been the property of Ducati for so long. That the new bike can not only be competitive but actually monopolize the results has to shake the series faithful to the core. Suzuki and Alstare team owner Francis Batta have put a huge amount of effort into this series because if you want to get your new bike noticed in the show room, having it reign at the race track is a good start. Expect the two GSXR riders to continue this trend this weekend in Spain.

Finally, there is the AMA series where the three Suzukis have been in the top four fastest in every test session and during the race at Daytona. Mat Mladin has topped everything at every track. No matter what your opinion of the guy’s personality, there is no getting around his riding prowess. The force he wields over the AMA Superbike field is incredible, both with his equipment, his skill and his psychological warfare. Last year Suzuki had a GSXR1000 Mat Mladin replica for sale, showing just how confident they were that Mladin’s win on Sunday would translate into sales on Monday. Mladin was consistently the fastest guy, sometimes by over a second, at the recent AMA test at Barber. Just like Daytona, I think Mladin will use that speed to pull away early and control the race from the front. That’s just the image Suzuki wants in people’s minds…

While Suzuki’s GSV-R MotoGP bike is getting is ass handed to it by Yamaha and Honda, they have found a different way to showcase their engineering strength and its a method that probably gets more potential buyers into showrooms. If Suzuki can sell more bikes by focusing on Superbike racing, do they really care if they stand atop the MotoGP podium?

The rest of the teams stack up like this:

BSB - Honda has kept a perfect win record so far, with Kiyonari and has captured second place two times in four races thanks to Michael Rutter’s performance. The only rider to put pressure on the two Hondas thus far as been Ducati mounted ex-WSBK star Gregorio Lavilla.

WSBK - The Hondas, Yamahas and Ducatis are all a half-step behind the Alstare squad but it looks like Ducati mounted Regis Laconi has the best chance of bridging the gap. There are a lot of young riders in WSBK this year (Muggeridge, Vermeulen, Neukirchner, Pitt, Lanzi), so maybe those guys still have some growth left in them as well.

AMA - I think Ducati’s Neil Hodgson is the only guy that can challenge the three Yoshimura Suzuki riders at this point. Honda are still struggling to build their bikes, Eric Bostrom is still trying to figure out the front end of the 999 and the Jordan Suzuki team is still trying to gel.

[image from the Powersports Network web site.]

With Kawasaki’s Alex Hoffman out with a wrist injury for the next five weeks, Team Green has found itself in need of a quality rider for the next two races. The upcoming race is at the new track in China in a little over a week with the following race at Le Mans in France two weeks later. Since every rider will be equally challenged at the new Shanghai facility, team owner Harald Eckl needed to find a rider that knows Le Mans. He has decided to turn to part-time Moriwaki test rider Olivier Jacque.

Jacque’s resume is mainly anchored by his 250GP World Championship in 2000. That season he raced his Yamaha teammate and title challenger Shinya Nakano all season long and narrowly won the last race at Phillip Island to earn the championship. Before the 2000 season, Jacque had been a talented 250 racer but had only occasional notable finishes. Following his 250 title, he and teammate Nakano where brought into the 500cc Gran Prix class on second tier Yamahas with the Herve Poncharal Gauloises team but both failed to make much of an impression. With the change to four strokes in 2002, both riders struggled with the finicky M1 for a few seasons before being let go from Yamaha at the end of 2003. For 2004 Nakano moved on to Kawasaki and is in the middle of an amazing resurgence. For 2004 Jacque moved to being a French motorcycle magazine reporter and filling in on one-off MotoGP rides for Moriwaki and WCM. Now, for the next two races, the pair will again be teammates. The sense of deja vu is amplified because ex-Yamaha GP project leader Ichiro Yoda is now the technical director for the Kawasaki team.

While the Frenchman never seemed to find his stride with the four stroke MotoGP bikes, he now seems to have found his calling as the person teams call when they need a solid rider who already knows the tracks, teams and the politics of the Grand Prix circus. In this regard, he joins the ranks of other riders who have become better known as pinch hitters than Grand Prix race winners like Jean-Michel Bayle, David De Gea, Gregorio Lavilla and even Anthony Gobert. However, it would seem that being a stand-in for injured Kawasaki riders pays off more than with other teams. Alex Hoffman got his start with Kawasaki as a substitute rider for an injured Hitoyasu Izutsu. Izutsu, in turn, did some testing work for Kawasaki when then MotoGP test rider Akira Yanagawa was injured in 2002. Andrew Pitt, a Kawasaki factory MotoGP rider in 2003, also sub’ed for the injured Yanagawa. Clearly Eckl has a history of later hiring his substitute riders…

Personally, I don’t expect great results from Jacque. Any GP bike requires a lot of testing to really master so its unrealistic to expect him to jump on the bike and immediately be up at the front. However, having a second rider, particularly one with as much experience as Jacque, is bound to help the Kawasaki team continue to improve the ZX-RR. It is always possible that Olivier’s home field advantage at Le Mans, when teamed with a strong desire to impress team owners and hopefully get back into MotoGP full time, will lead to an inspired ride in three weeks. If nothing else, the Kawasaki ride should keep his skills honed so that when he gets his Moriwaki wild card rides later in the season he’ll be ready to race.

Being the guy that gets called in as a substitute rider isn’t all bad. It certainly wouldn’t suck to be the guy that periodically gets called to fly to some exotic location and ride a 250hp MotoGP bike around for a weekend.

[image from the Olivier Jacque web site.]

As I mentioned in a blog posting last December, I’m looking to add a new bike to the garage this year. After a few months of looking, I’m still not ready to lay down cash but the field has been cut down to just a few candidates.

Before talking about the contenders, let me explain how I narrowed the field. First, I got to spend two weeks riding the new BMW R1200GS during our recent Edelweiss tour in Spain. The new GS is a fantastic bike but ultimately it doesn’t differ enough from my current R1150GS to justify an upgrade. What was most apparent is that the new GS is lighter than the older model. I’m not convinced BMW has really gotten more ponies out of the motor but with less weight it feels that way. When it does come time to replace the R1150GS, the new 1200 will be the one but not this summer…

Another option was to replace my old FT500 Ascot based track bike with something newer but that was a long shot from the beginning because of how little I use the thing. Jonna really loved the F650GS during the Spain trip and has expressed an interest in replacing her SV650 with the Beemer. That leads to a possible situation where I sell the Ascot, turn her SV into a track bike and then get her a F650. However, when we looked at the cost difference between the Suzuki and the BMW, that option seemed less attractive. Again, maybe in the future but not this summer.

So with those two alternatives postponed I’ve started seriously looking at sport bikes. Any of the liter bikes are pretty hard to justify, given that they have more power and better handling that I’d probably ever use on the street, but when are bikes really a logical thing? If I can buy a 185 hp, tire shredding, asphalt melting monster why wouldn’t I? The Suzuki GSXR1000 and Kawasaki ZX-10R top the list of sport bikes that I’ve been checking out.

But there is one bike that I’m passionate enough about that I would buy it immediately: the KTM 990 Superduke. The bike just seems perfect…light weight, upright seating, lots of power but still tuned and geared as a brutal supermotard bike. I like the bike’s looks and think the KTM V-twin motor is really in its perfect environment in the Superduke…a physically small motor but with big power. Now for the bad news: KTM isn’t importing the Superduke into the US in 2005. A few of the local shops have them but only for display purposes, not for sale. KTM USA hasn’t announced any plans to import the bike in 2006 either, so the chances of the bike being available this fall looks pretty slim. For the moment, the closest I can get is surfing the 990 Superduke web site and watching the promotional video over and over.

If anyone from KTM USA is reading, consider this one vote for bringing the 990 Superduke to the States. If there are any grey market importers reading, then forget KTM USA, lets talk!

[image from the Sport Rider web site.]

ESPN2 screwed up their grid guide this past Sunday so I was unable to watch the Seattle round of the AMA Supercross race on TV. Nonetheless, from what I’ve read it appears that the top four riders were all news makers.

First, Bubba Stewart pulled another performance like at Dallas a couple of weeks ago and simply crushed the field. From start to finish he was plainly faster than anyone else. More importantly, he kept it upright and didn’t throw the bike down the track. If he does this a few more times, maybe he’ll start making habit of it.

Second, Kevin Windham put in a tremendous ride to get a second place, his best finish since the second round of the series back in Phoenix. Beating both Carmichael and Reed is going to be another boost to his confidence and he’ll need that for the upcoming motocross season.

Next up, Ricky Carmichael rode a smart and safe race to fill out the podium and get the final points he needed to take the World Supercross GP championship. He also finished ahead of Reed and thus kept his points lead for the AMA Supercross title.

Finally, Chad Reed gets a consolation prize. After getting parked in the first turn and punted off the track by a sliding Windham and Stewart, Chad turned in an amazing ride to charge back to forth. While it doesn’t do much for his title hopes, it does show he’s got the speed needed to consistently beat early season rival Carmichael.

My thoughts from this one are pretty simple. Stewart continues to show just how phenomenal a rider he has become by effortlessly turning lap times a second a lap faster than anyone else. Windham always seems to do best when his confidence is high and he’s gaining momentum here at the end of the season but will have to deal with the Stewart show from now on which may be worse than anything Ricky has dished out thusfar. Speaking of Carmichael, RC is playing it smart but has to be worried about Stewart’s speed. With Stewart committed to running a proven two-stroke in the outdoors, Carmichael may be reconsidering his decision to run the new four stroke. Finally, Reed really needs to get some sort of award for mental strength since he just keeps coming back again and again. Crushing defeats, crashes, mistakes and getting punted off the track but he still turns in fantastic rides.

My only other comment is the near complete meaninglessness of the “World Supercross GP” title. The FIM has decided that tacking on a mandatory pair of Canadian rounds onto the front of the AMA Supercross series somehow qualifies it for a separate “world class” championship. There needs to be more non-American rounds and a lot more non-US riders to get any sort of world title status. Right now it is just a bonus the AMA Supercross champ gets for running a couple of practice events before the official season starts. Ideally, a World Supercross series would differ enough from the AMA series that riders couldn’t run both, meaning they either race for money in the US or for a world title in a seperate series. At the moment the AMA series has the best Supercross riders in the world but a World championship should at least be unique whether it has the best riders or not.

[image from the Moto X Sports website.]

Brazilian Alex Barros almost won his home race today. The fact is, he did win the MotoGP race it just wasn’t in his home country. The Brazilian Grand Prix, originally scheduled for this weekend, was dropped off the calendar this past winter due to contract negotiation problems and the Portugese Grand Prix at the Estoril circuit was added as a last minute substitution. I guess having a common language was close enough for Barros because he put on a riding lesson all weekend long by leading every practice session, taking pole position, turning the fastest lap and then winning the race.

The real story of the race wasn’t the racing it was things like the weather and rider injuries. Spitting rain all day long meant that the race was run under cloudy skies and early in the race the new “wet weather” rules kicked in allowing riders to pit for a backup bike (with different tires) if they chose. Despite some parts of the track becoming very slippery, all riders opted to stay out. The combination of slick tires, tricky track layout and misting rain meant lots of riders visited the gravel trap. The most dramatic instance being race leader and championship contender Sete Gibernau who threw his bike into the turn 1 kitty liter on the 17th lap. Also taking spills were Hopkins, Bayliss and Edwards. At the finish line it was Barros ahead of Rossi and Biaggi. This puts Rossi into the series points lead, followed by Barros, Melandri and Biaggi.

Added to the injured list this weekend were Honda’s Makoto Tamada, Troy Bayliss also on a Honda and Yamaha’s Tony Elias. Tamada crashed during qualifying and is thought to have broken his wrist. As a result, he missed the race altogether. The scaphoid, the same bone broken by Kawasaki’s Alex Hoffman earlier in the week, is a very slow bone to heal since there is very little blood flow in that part of the wrist. The normal treatment is six weeks in a cast or inserting a metal pin but I doubt a top star like Tamada will wait that long. An improperly healed scaphoid can basically end a rider’s career…just look at the wrist injuries that plagued Freddie Spencer during his career, so I hope the talented Konica Minolta rider doesn’t rush back too quickly. Bayliss’ injury wasn’t as severe but that is only because the Australian rider apparently rubbed his lucky rabbit’s foot the morning of qualifying. Troy had a *huge* highside that slammed him down on his head and shoulder. Aside from a sore neck, he is reported to be uninjured from the accident. He also crashed, apparently uninjured, in the race meaning it may be time to buy a new luck token because his current one is surely empty now. The final injury news was GP rookie Tony Elias who also crashed twice during qualifying. The second crash resulted in an injured knee. Elias rode in the race and finished a respectable 14th.

At this point, its easier to talk about who isn’t injured that to talk about who is. Barros, Rossi, Biaggi and Melandri are all healthy…hmmm…they are also the top four finishers. Edwards (sixth today), Nakano (eighth), Xaus (tenth), Roberts Jr (twelfth) and Hopkins (DNF) round out the list of healthy factory riders. WCM’s Battaini and Ellison and D’antin’s Rolfo are also unscathed so far this season. Some of these are a surprise, given that Melandri, Xaus, Hopkins and Roberts have all spent a decent amount of time testing gravel traps so far this season. Toby Hirst’s morning warm-up article at Superbikeplanet.com pointed out the fascinating statistic that this weekend marked the 14th crash so far this year for Ruben Xaus. Xaus may end up costing Yamaha more money than Rossi’s salary! Adding in teammate Elias’ two crashes this weekend and Edward’s race crash means there is probably a shortage of M1 bodywork back in Japan right now.

Looking beyond the MotoGP to the 250GPs makes for a huge contrast. Where the bigger bikes were fairly processional, only interrupted by the occasional crash, the 250 race was a barn burner. It looked more like a 125 race than what the past season has shown from the quarter liter two strokes. From the green flag, Porto took off and built an impressive lead in just a few laps. The following gaggle of riders was incredible to watch with five or six riders all mixed up in a dog fight. Pedrosa, Stoner, De Punier, De Angelis, Dovisioso, Aoyama and Takahashi were all over one another while Porto continued to pull away. Around half race distance, Porto apparently started having trouble since his lap times fell and he was gradually caught and passed by the trailing pack. The top five (Pedrosa, Dovisioso, Stoner, De Puniet and De Angelis) pulled a gap on the following two Japanese riders and then with just a couple of laps to go Stoner, Dovisioso and De Puniet pulled a slight break. In the end, Stoner won his first 250 Grand Prix, Dovisioso earned his first 250 podium with a second place finish and De Puniet bounced back from his crash at Jerez to earn some valuable points. In the championship, Pedrosa leads Porto and De Angelis.

I’d like to comment on two things. First, the new flag-to-flag rule. This new rule means that a race where it starts to rain, after starting the race in dry conditions, will not be stopped. Instead, a flag will be shown that will allow riders to pit and change to a backup bike that is in “wet weather” setup. This pit stop will take somewhere between 30 seconds to a minute (and interestingly enough will void the FIM’s own 22 liter fuel limitation rule). The idea for this rule is to keep the TV cameras rolling and to prevent “two part” races which, when scored on cumulative time, mean the first person across the finish line isn’t necessarily the winner. This weekend’s weather was dicey and made for variable track conditions. While no one was injured due to their crash today, I think this race does show that riders will not pull into the pits unless weather conditions are so bad that *everyone* is going to pit. It is today’s conditions that offer the worst case scenario where the leaders stay out on the wrong tires in sketchy conditions because pitting may compromise their result. Instead, they are compromising their safety. I think the FIM knows how much scrutiny they will be under because of this new ruling and they certainly dodged the bullet today. Still, I hope this ruling will be re-thought before something more serious occurs.

Second, I want to point out one of the traits of a champion…they know how to take what they can get. In today’s MotoGP race, both Gibernau and Barros had Rossi beaten. Rather than push and risk crashing while trying to stay with obviously faster riders/bikes, Rossi sat back and rode his own race. After Sete crashed, Vale was gifted second place and those points put him atop the championship points table. Likewise, in the 250 race, Pedrosa didn’t push on the damp track to beat the youngsters like Stoner and Dovisioso. He finished forth in the race but those points were enough to put him on top in the 250 points. Both riders rode a smart race, knowing who their championship rivals are likely to be and only doing what is necessary to stay ahead of those riders. Even when a champion has an off day, its still often enough to further their cause. This is an important lesson for more hot headed riders to learn. Last year Barros and Stoner both crashed while trying to win races, today they both won. Perhaps it is a lesson they have both taken to heart.

[image from Yahoo Sports France web site.]

“Man came by to hook up my cable TV
We settled in for the night my baby and me
We switched ’round and ’round ’til half-past dawn
There was fifty-seven channels and nothin’ on”
– Bruce Springsteen, 57 Channels

Despite my working in the TV industry, I’m not really a big fan of television. Other than spending many Sundays and Tuesdays watching motorcycle racing on SpeedTV I rarely turn on the old boob tube, preferring instead to play on the computer, read or even play in the garage. But because of my addiction to MotoGP, AMA, World Superbike and other forms of motorcycle racing, I’ll never throw the damned thing out.

While I’m glad that SpeedTV still covers the major motorcycle series, I’m definitely sick of all their NASCAR programming. I don’t have anything against NASCAR, car racing is car racing whether its lawnmowers, American sedans or Formula 1 its just that I’m not into cars. Perhaps you’ve heard the motto “Four wheels bad, two wheels good". If SpeedTV covered Formula 1 all the time I’d be sick of that too. I’d complain more but I know that the number of viewers which tune into NASCAR mechanics reality TV or whatever is on Thursday nights is ten times the number that will tune into a motorcycle roadrace. There are times I get upset, like last weekend when the MotoGP color commentary guys announced the winner of the yet-to-be-televised 250GP race. There are times I’m frustrated by their schedule, waiting two weeks to show the 125GP races. But ultimately, I’m grateful for the motorcycle racing that is available on TV and try to quietly enjoy it while I can.

Dorna, the commercial rights holder for the MotoGP series sent out an interesting press release after last weekend’s MotoGP race at Jerez, Spain which has caused me to be a little less quiet this week. What their press release included were some statistics on viewership of Eurosport’s coverage of the race…The full press release is available on the Team KR website but the Cliff Notes version is just this: Motorcycle racing is real damned popular in Europe, just as popular as NASCAR is in this country. The average percentage of TVs in Spain and Italy tuned to the *4 hour* live broadcast of the GP races at Jerez, was around 33%. That means that one third of the TVs were tuned to Italy’s Italia1 and Spain’s TV-E during the race. During the “the incident” where Rossi and Gibernau clashed in the last corner between 40% and 45% of viewers were watching in both countries. That’s nearly half the TV viewing population. Amazing! Now that indicates an interest in my kind of reality TV!

Now I’m wishing I could get some sort of pirate broadcast of Eurosport and watch motorcycle racing the way the Europeans do. In the meantime, I’ll be tuning into SpeedTV this Sunday to watch the two hour, tape delayed MotoGP and 250GP races. Then I’ll spend the following two weeks trying to learn Spanish or Italian until I can finally catch the 125 race…

[image from the SpeedTV web site.]

I got a quick lesson in paying attention tonight. I ended up working late, thanks to a maintenance outage my team was doing on some equipment in our computer lab at work, and finally got on the road at 10pm. It was pretty chilly out thanks to the two foot of snow we got two days ago and which is still melting out. What’s more, I’d gotten pretty caught up in work and had missed dinner so my body was reminding me that it was time to *EAT*. After getting on my electric jacket liner, my fleece, my winter gloves and my normal riding gear, I got on the bike and headed for home.

I normally ride 5 to 10 mph over the posted speed limit which generally puts me either with or slightly faster than the bulk of the traffic. My theory, in addition to just thinking faster is more fun, is that I’d rather be passing cars than having them pass me. This way I get to make the decision about when I am in their blind spot, when I speed up and when I slow down. Anyway, as I’m approaching the city of Boulder, I suddenly see a City of Boulder patrol car on the shoulder on the inside of a right hand turn about 50 feet away. Wow, I nearly missed seeing him completely. Was I zoning out or what? I checked my speed, saw I was doing 70 in a 65 and figured I was safe. Well, the office figured differently and pulled me over.

Let me back up for a second here and explain my commute. Going from work to home, the first 10 miles are on a controlled access, divided highway. Its four lanes of fast moving traffic (during the day 75 or 80 isn’t unusual for the bulk of traffic), it is relatively straight and pretty boring on a motorcycle. Then there is 10 minutes of playing red light-green light through the city itself, mainly because the traffic control engineer somehow managed to make it so you have to stop at every traffic light whether you are going north to south or east to west. At the far western edge of the city, the road starts going up Boulder Canyon to Nederland and its 20 miles of fantastic curvy mountain roads for the rest of the commute. This last bit is usually the highlight of the ride but melting snow (refreezing into ice at this time of the night) and fine gravel (used instead of salt to melt snow but just little ball bearings when there isn’t any snow to melt) made it less so at this particular time. The last 200 yards is a dirt road. Well, it is normally a dirt road. This morning it was a minor mud bog and tonight it was sort of like leftover creme brulee with a crunchy ice topping and a cold slimy filling.

So anyway, I was more than a little apprehensive about riding home at 10 o’clock at night on sandy roads, potentially icy *and* sandy roads, in cold weather though deer infested woods on an empty stomach. I was a bit preoccupied on the ride which was only made worse when I started trying to work out what I was going to write about on the blog tonight rather than thinking about what I was really doing which was riding a motorcycle over a mile every minute. Well, the muse had a funny way of striking tonight….it was wearing a police officer’s uniform!

To make a long story short, the officer was quite a nice guy. He informed me that the speed limit dropped from 65 to 55 at the point were he was parked. You’d think I’d know that, given that I ride this road every day but just never noticed the sign…maybe because there is usually a lot of traffic moving around at that point with people trying to get into and out of an exit only lane… Since I wasn’t doing anything particularly heinous, he let me off with just a warning. I am convinced that this was helped by the fact that:

1) I was riding a big fat Beemer with bigger and fatter saddle bags. He may have thought his radar was in error and that the pig of a bike couldn’t actually go 71 mph!

2) I was wearing full riding gear (plus two layers of cold weather gear) including my helmet, gloves, boots and riding suit. Surely any safety freak dressed like this didn’t *mean* to be going that fast.

3) Said riding suit has all the stylish appeal of the Michelin tire guy in a bright puke yellow EMT jumpsuit. Who am I going to impress even if the bike will go faster than the speed limit?!?!?

4) I was respectful, removed my helmet and generally made sure I kept my hands where he could see them at all times. Yes sir, I am an idiot sir, thank your for pointing that out sir.

5) I had all my paperwork: license, registration, insurance card easily accessible. I probably helps that I haven’t had a ticket in four or five years, too.

and finally

6) I have a head and beard full of grey hair so looked more like an aging hippie than a crazed speed daemon.

I appreciate the officer giving me a break, it saved me about $100. But I’m still kicking myself for being so out of it that I wasn’t paying attention, either for the changing speed limit signs or looking out for police. I’d certainly have deserved a ticket, had I been given one. I guess I better go help some little old ladies across the street or be nice to our management at work, ‘cause I’m sure I need to make a deposit into the karma bank to cover this one.

[image from the City of Boulder Fleet Services web site.]

Just before the official IRTA MotoGP tests, I did a blog entry commenting on how generally healthy the MotoGP riders were at the start of the season. Well, after two test sessions and one race, the injury report looks completely different.

The biggest news is the shoulder injury to Honda’s Sete Gibernau. After the impact with Rossi on the last lap of the Jerez GP, Sete immediately grabbed his left shoulder. According to a press release from Team Gresini, Gibernau has an injury to his previously damaged shoulder and is now questionable for this weekend’s race at Estoril in Portugal. The Spanish press has already picked up the story and is no doubt fanning the flames of the millions of Spanish fans that are on the war path for Rossi’s head. How much of this press release is true, and to what extent it is true, is open to debate but if there is really a chance Gibernau may not make the next race it will be a blow to the series. I doubt the all-Italian FIM would actually take any action against Rossi, even if it was obvious that he was reckless in the Jerez incident, but I do believe they should take a close look at what effect potentially having one of their three stars out of the championship race at only the second event will have and then take stricter measures to discourage contact in future races.

On a more positive note, Honda’s Nicky Hayden had his injured thumb checked out after Jerez and his x-rays came back negative for any breaks. It looks like he just has a sprain and will be cleared to race for this weekend. I’m sure he’ll still feel the pain when the next green flag starts. Whether he can repair his broken momentum after his Jerez crash is another issue.

Also questionable for Esotril is Ducati’s Loris Capirossi. The Ducati team hung around Jerez for another day after last weekend’s race to get in some additional testing but Loris missed the session because of his fractured ankle. While he is likely to race this weekend despite the injury he will have an even more difficult time than last Sunday, when he finished 13th, because Estoril is a short, tight and physically demanding track.

Meanwhile, his teammate Carlos Checa did test at Jerez on Monday despite the shoulder injury which slowed him last weekend, where he finished 10th. His times from Monday’s test were better that his race times so hopefully his shoulder wasn’t re-injured during his bump with Tamada during the previous day’s race. Like Capirossi, it is likely that Checa will also be held back by his injury at the Portugese bullring this weekend.

The only other possible injury from last weekend’s race was Ruben Xaus who crashed on the first lap but he is such a pro at crashing that he undoubtedly came away uninjured. Other than causing another wound to Yamaha’s racing budget thanks to more shattered bodywork, the Fortuna rider will show up in Portugal ready to race.

In a freak situation, Shane Byrne actually had an accident *after* the race when he was involved in a pit scooter crash which took some skin off his hands and arms. This is another set back for the KTM-Proton team so don’t expect their results to improve at the second race.

With four factory riders slowed by injury, including the second place finisher from the first race, along with the rider from one of the “privateer” teams, the injury list now looks a lot worse than it did just a month ago.

[image from the GP One website.]

Okay, so this is about Pontiac, Michigan and not the Pontiac cars…in case you didn’t catch the connection, I snagged the marketing slogan for the GM subsidiary as the title of this blog entry…

The excitement in Pontiac this past weekend was two fold as the AMA 125 East division would crown its champion and the 250 class would see another head-to-head battle among its star studded ranks.

In the 125 class, it was an interesting race. Not because of the close racing but because of the point battle and the required finishing positions of the three men in the title hunt. In the race, Josh Hansen pulled out to an early lead, which was pretty much required since he has a long list of enemies that would have been happy to put him into the tuff blocks and because the AMA probation after his altercation with Josh Grant meant he in turn had to be cautious around other riders. Grant Langston and Davi Millsaps both had bad starts giving Hansen a mathematical chance at winning the title. Millsaps, with nothing to lose, charged through the pack to eventually finish second to Hansen. A great ride but not enough to swing the championship his way. Finishing third was the relatively unknown Joaquim Rodrigues. He rode an excellent race but unfortunately his podium was overshadowed by the point battle between other riders. Langston had to bring the Kawasaki home in forth to tie Hansen in season points, at which time Langston’s superior number of wins would determine the tie-breaker and give him the championship.

After looking very smooth in most of the races this season, Grant looked particularly sloppy in the 125 main. He took a major slide in the first corner on the start, nearly ending his race right there. All through the race he was visibly riding worse that is his norm but yet he still managed to hold onto forth position though the middle stages of the race. Late in the race Steve Boniface started to challenge but Grant ultimately held it together for the forth place finish and the 125 East title. In the post race interview he admitted to being very nervous and riding very tight. Fortunately, he’s talented enough that even when riding poorly he could do what he had to do.

Congratulations to Grant on his Championship.

In the 250 race, everyone was watching the Stewart-Carmichael-Reed show. Fortunately, after a string of races in relative obscurity, Windham was able to re-emerge as a front runner by winning his heat race over Reed. Stewart again beat Carmichael in the second heat, giving these four the primary gates for the main. The rest of the gates might as well have been empty, now that these four riders have so completely taken over the focus of the Supercross spotlight. Everyone was else was out there just to fill out the grid…

When the gate dropped there was another surprise as Windham pulled the holeshot and started to lead the race. After having been so thoroughly beaten by Stewart, Carmichael and Reed lately, I’d basically written the Honda rider off but he showed he’s still a solid rider by keeping everyone at bay for over half the race. I think he has been slow to rebuild his confidence in his riding but this day appeared to be a big step forward for him. If he can keep these performances up for the last few races, he should be in great shape to start the outdoors back in the role of a title contender.

Stewart was the next one to shake things, as he put the Kawasaki into the dirt on lap four after gaining a position on each of the previous laps. He crashed while going after Carmichael for second position. Last week, I was raving about Stewart and his dominating win in Dallas. Well, this week I’d have to say the doubts are back. He’s crashed in all but one of his 250 SX races, meaning he’s tasted dust in four of five appearances. While its commendable that he came back to finish forth after his crash the trend is still something to be concerned about. People that regularly crash, no matter how talented, will eventually get hurt. In Bubba’s case, that would be hurt again since he just finished healing up from his wrist injury sustained at Phoenix. Sure, the front four riders are so good that even if they crash they’re nearly guaranteed a fourth place finish but that’s playing dangerous odds. Stewart still has to learn the patience not to push too hard to soon, the ability to pace himself so he only rides as fast as necessary to win and the championship mentality of taking points when you can, even if it means passing up standing on top of the podium.

Reed showed solid form in running down Windham and Carmichael, then going on to take the win. His string of wins have to be helping rebuild his confidence, something that will help keep his SX championship dreams alive and put him in good shape for the upcoming outdoor season. He’s won four SX races so far this season, second only to RC’s seven, and three of those wins were in the last four races. Certainly a positive trend for the Aussie rider.

Finally, the real winner coming out of Pontiac was Ricky Carmichael. He has, at least momentarily, put his crashing trend behind him and rode with skill and brains. He was able to run down Windham in the middle part of the race, then ride smart after being passed by Reed, since he knows that a second place puts him closer to the title. Had he tried to run with Chad and ended up making a dumb pass on a backmarker or sliding out on the very hard and gravely Pontiac track, he would have lost more than he possibly could have gained. At this point he needs to sew up the title, then try to return to the psychological warfare against his opponents at the season closer in Vegas.

But at the end of the night last Saturday, it wasn’t the 250 guys that made the front page news. It was Grant Langston who finally, after four years of trying, finally brought home an AMA Supercross trophy. That’s building excitement!

[image from Grant Langston’s web site.]

Sometimes even the predictable can be unpredictable and today’s MotoGP race proved to be one off those times. From the first laps, it was obvious that the race would boil down to three men: Gibernau, Rossi and Hayden. The three immediately pulled out away in front with the young Melandri showing fantastic speed to follow but still steadily falling back. After just the first few laps, the front three pulled a gap over Melandri who then pulled a gap over surprise fifth place Nakano.

As the race wore on, the race came down to the bitter enemies from last year, Yamaha’s Valetino Rossi and Honda’s Sete Gibernau with Sete leading from the front and Rossi parked on his rear tire. The scene was eerily reminiscent of last season where Rossi regularly stalked Sete during races and, with one exception, was always successful.

The first thing that showed the race would be unpredictable was the scene of Nicky Hayden pushing his Honda out of the gravel. After looking so fast and comfortable at the last test session (at Jerez) and all through practice and qualifying, he ended his race in the pits with a dusty RC211V and with a hurt thumb.

With two laps to go, Rossi put the move on Gibernau that everyone had expected for the previous 25 laps. Rossi cut up the inside of him with ease but didn’t pull away. Instead, Sete hung tough. On the final lap, Rossi made a mistake and Gibernau charged through into the lead. Rossi made another bid for the lead halfway through the final lap but still came into the last turn in second. At the final left hander, the reigning champ threw his Yamaha up the inside of the Honda mounted Spainard and ended up punting Gibernau into the gravel trap. The Italian crossed the finish line first with the Spanish crowd going haywire at the indignity of seeing their hero treated so harshly. Melandri, well back from the leading pair, crossed the finish line in third. The podium finish a credible way for the new Honda recruit to start the season.

With the race over, a number of newsworthy items were highlighted.

First, the ruthlessness of Rossi’s pass. Valentino ended the 2004 season with a reputation that he was willing to mix it up with his rivals to earn both a points and psychological advantage. Some of his more aggressive moves, like hitting Gibernau at Assen, were brushed off as mistakes. Given Rossi’s near complete mastery of his bike, as well as his shrewd race strategy, I am highly skeptical of this explanation. Thus when Rossi made what appeared to be a banzai move on Gibernau in that last corner and then appeared so jubilant when crossing the finish line after sending his Honda rival off the track I tend to think it wasn’t an innocent “that’s racing” accident. Personally, I think Rossi owes Gibernau a public apology but I know that the psychological stakes are too high. Not only that, I think Rossi was aware that the only way he would make it through that final corner was to push Gibernau out of the way. Its too bad that the season is starting surrounded with such bad blood and that racing this year may be more physical that in years past. Any sport with 200 mph top speeds doesn’t need any more danger.

I was also sorry to see that Hayden is still making rookie mistakes. He’s been in MotoGP for three years now and should have known that third place points are better than starting a season injured and with a goose egg for his points tally. He had Melandri comfortably covered and wasn’t likely to catch the front two. Whether he was sent down by a dusty track or overly aggressive braking, the end result is that he wound up in the kitty litter and the others didn’t. Now he’ll have to get his head around his failure, hope that his thumb isn’t too badly injured and try to re-build the momentum he had going into this race.

Making it a two-for-two, lets talk about the other Repsol Honda rider, Max Biaggi. It seems that Max decided to try something different this year. After years of coming apart like a cheap shirt at the end of the season while contending for the championship, he apparently decided to come apart at the first race this time around. He ran poorly at Jerez in the pre-season test, blaming his team for his lackluster times, and has followed that up by qualifying horribly in 16th and running outside the top ten for most of the race. His seventh place finish shows some attempt to recover but considering the misfortune of other racers even that finish was a gift: Checa is riding with an injured shoulder, Capirossi is riding with a fractured ankle, Roberts Jr. DNF’ed with a mechanical, Hopkins was fighting the flu, Xaus crashed on the first lap and, as already noted, Hayden crashed near the end. Surely, neither Honda nor Biaggi are satisfied with finishing like that.

Ducati apparently decided not to send its battered riders out into the race with their new electronics package after both were again smacked to the ground during pre-race practice because of it. What was revealed just before the race is that the reason for Ducati’s insistence on the high tech addition is their concern over fuel consumption on their GP bike now that the fuel tank capacity has been reduced to 22 liters. The Ducati is clearly a powerful motorcycle and they either have to reduce engine power or find new ways of improving fuel efficiency while maintaining their current engine design. Fortunately, both riders made the finish line without running out of fuel but the folks back in Bologna better decide what hurts there championship chances the most, fuel usage or injured riders.

Edwards wasn’t the factor that he appeared earlier in the week. A poor qualifying result didn’t help but ultimately his pace was that of the mid-pack bunch rather than the front runners. As the #2 man at Yamaha, he’s expected to be taking points from the front Honda men, not fighting with the Kawasakis and Suzukis. As with Checa last year, being a teammate to Rossi may not be the dream job Colin thought when it was first offered. Rossi can get pole position, lap record and win on the bike so the pressure is really on Edwards.

My final MotoGP comment is giving some props to the Kawasaki team. Their pre-season testing indicated they we struggling with their new “Big Bang” engine layout but the riders had commendable showings at Jerez. Both qualified well and Nakano finished a phenomenal fifth, continuing the results he had last year. Hoffman finished in eleventh so both Team Green riders brought home points in the opening race. Kawasaki’s performance over the past two seasons should have the engineers at Ducati and Suzuki glowing red with embarrassment. Clearly I underestimated them and I’m glad to see them doing so well as the series needs all the competitive equipment it can get.

The 250GP race wasn’t nearly as excited as I had expected, mainly because Pedrosa started from pole position and a fantastic hole shot. When the young Spanaird is ahead on the first lap, he can get into his rhythm and just run away from everyone else. Despite the talented field stacked up against him, no one could get ahead of him in the first laps and turn it into a passing battle. Porto showed he’s able to run fast but couldn’t quite match Pedrosa in the closing laps. Perhaps it was the Spanish crowd willing him own that gave Pedrosa that extra little tenth of a second advantage or may Pedrosa was just sand bagging in pre-season testing. Either way, he had them all covered at Jerez.

The main news item here is just that Pedrosa is still a force to be reckoned with and it is the “old timers” that came closest to running with him rather than any of the class rookies. Pedrosa was consistently fast last year and it appears he is carrying that momentum with him this year.

Like Pedrosa, Stoner and de Puniet picked up exactly where they left off last year by both throwing their bikes down the track. These guys, clearly following in the footsteps of Melandri and Xaux, seem to have decided that spirited crashing is their ticket to MotoGP stardom. Maybe they are the real reason that Aprilia went bankrupt last year. Both, along with Porto, are probably the only people that can run Pedrosa’s pace but these two don’t have a prayer in the championship race unless they can stop falling off their bikes.

Dovizioso, the 2004 125GP champion, had a fantastic opening race in the 250s with a forth place finish. He appeared to be well off the pace of the front two but he beat many others who have a lot more 250 experience. He also used his head and stayed on his bike with others fell off. In fact, twelve different riders failed to finish including spectacular crashes by Aoyama and Jenker, in addition to the ones already mentioned by Stoner and de Puniet. Smart riding by the young Italian and something to build on throughout the season. Bravo.

I’ll have to wait two weeks to watch the 125GP race, since Speed isn’t showing it until April 26th. So I can’t really comment on it yet.

Anyway, it was an interesting start to the season. With the next race just a week away in Portugal, I suspect that the simmering hatred between Sete Gibernau and Valentino Rossi will not have cooled any. I suspect hoards of Spanish fans will trek to Estoril giving Pedrosa overwhelming fan support. Riders like Nicky Hayden and Casey Stoner will have their opportunity to get back on the horse, hopefully before their recent crashes get too far into their head. …and TV viewership in Spain and Italy will be at an all time high! I certainly plan to catch it on Speed this coming Sunday.

[image from the Gresini Racing web site.]

The opening race of the 2005 MotoGP season is this weekend at the Jerez Circuit in the Andalucia region of Spain. The final IRTA test of the season was held at Jerez a couple of weeks ago so all the teams have some recent test time there under their belts. This is in marked contrast to past seasons where the opening race has been held in South Africa, a track that is at high altitude and where the teams rarely test. As a result, all the teams should have their bikes dialed and their riders confident when the flag drops this Sunday.

The whole galaxy of MotoGP enthusiasts are, like last year, orbiting around Rossi. He has been such a force in Grand Prix over the past eight years that every conversation starts with him. Well, I can be different. I can talk about the other bright stars in the MotoGP universe. I can but I’m not. I mean really, you have to start the 2005 MotoGP with the assumption that Rossi will win since he’s spent the past few years steadily surpassing every doubt people have had about him.

So, with that excuse out of the way, on to talking about Rossi (again). The one thing that is still obvious, after all the laps of winter testing, is that Yamaha look set for another good year. The pairing of Rossi and Edwards on their factory bikes, without a question the two best development riders in the world and both very, very similar in riding style, means they have put together a solid test plan for the winter and executed it without a hitch. Sure, the new version of the M1 appears to have some of the same chatter problems that plagued the Hondas last season but Yamaha appear to have worked through them. As some of the expert journalists like Julian Ryder, Toby Hirst and Dennis Noyes have pointed out, Rossi and Edwards ride their bike the same way. As a result, they could split their winter testing program so that Edwards could focus on testing tires for Michelin, something perfect for him given his longstanding relationship with the French company, while Rossi could focus on going through bike testing as Yamaha released new parts. For any other pair of riders this would be disastrous because the tires wouldn’t fit the bike when the two were combined. Yet with these two, they could both return to cutting fast laps when the testing was done and both have a bike that suited their style.

The secondary Yamaha team of Xaus and Elias have struggled all through testing. Ex-250 racer Elias has to adapt to the big four stroke and Xaus is just too big for the bike. Still, Xaus’ experience in MotoGP is undoubtedly being passed down to rookie Elias and Elias’ setup information has surely helped Xaus, since the lanky Spaniard missed the first two test sessions with butt injuries from squeezing onto the tiny M1. Neither rider is on the pace of the lead Yamaha team, nor the Hondas, but both have the talent, team and bike to pick it up as the season progresses.

In contrast, Honda has seven amazing riders but with one possible exception, also has seven seperate test programs going on simultaneously. There is certainly no love lost between Hayden and Biaggi and their riding styles can’t be more different. Gibernau is probably willing to share setup information with his teammate Melandri but Gibernau is rumored to be on full factory tackle while Melandri works with the “b” level bike. A lot of Sete’s setup information probably isn’t valid for Marco. Tamada, unquestionably a superb rider, is in a team by himself so the information that has been gathered from his fast laps isn’t going anywhere. That leaves the Pons team of Barros and Bayliss. They are probably willing to share information but both have generally been off the pace and both have opposite riding styles. What’s the point of sharing data if it isn’t the right info? Despite these hurdles, it appears that Honda’s isolated development efforts have born fruit since many of their riders have topped the timing charts at the tests and have put in consistent race-speed laps when doing race simulation tire tests.

The other big topic has been the end-of-testing speed shown by the Suzuki. Its only been at two tests that Suzuki have performed well, so its really to early too say, but at least at this time they appear to have finally found the direction to go with their bike. While I doubt Hopkins or Roberts will fight for the win, and probably not even for the podium, at least they appear to be pulling a gap on the backmarker teams.

Kawasaki has taken a bold approach in completely changing their engine, like Yamaha did, to have a “Big Bang” format but haven’t impressed anyone with any new found speed. After having such a spectacular year in 2004, it seems they haven’t leaped forward as fast as some of the other teams. Their target last year was the podium, something they achieved multiple times, but this year I think they’ll simply be trying to beat the Suzukis and Ducatis.

Speaking of Ducati, it looks like they have slipped up the most. 2004 was a step backwards from their freshman year and it seems they haven’t gained much in the off season. Like Aprilia before them, Ducati seem to be trying out a lot of fancy electronics to tame their always fast but usually brutal Desmosedici. These gizmos seem to be getting about the same reception from the riders as they did back at Aprilia with Checa and Capirossi both having crashes rumored to be caused by the new equipment. We’ll have to see if during the first few races they can recover the test time they lost in trying out spiffy electronics and become competitive again. I’m guessing no…

That leaves the others…Blata-WCM, KTM-Roberts and D’Antin. The least dim star here should be the KTM powered, Roberts framed bike with Byrne at the controls. The bike is unlikely to run with the Japanese but should better the others. With only one rider, development goes half a fast but at least they seem to have a solid starting point and good tires. D’Antin, with last year’s Ducati in his hands, would look best in this regard but he has a MotoGP rookie in Rolfo (a talented GP rookie with past 250GP success…but a MotoGP rookie nonetheless) on the bike, crap Dunlop tires, only a single rider and perhaps a smaller budget than even KTM-Roberts. The struggles this team will face would make a fan cringe were it not for Blata-WCM having an even bleaker future. As forecast, they have been unable to build their v-6 GP bike fast enough to make the first race of the season. Instead, Ellison and Battaini will start with last years inline-four bike. This bike could barely run fast enough lap times last year to qualify for races and, with the step forward made by other teams, may not even make the grid this year. What they have to look forward to is a humiliating start to the season, followed by trying to frantically build and develop a brand new bike while racing it. Just ask Team Roberts about how well that works out.

This huge gap between the top four or five teams and the last three, along with losing two teams from last year, signals that the costs required to race at the MotoGP level may finally be reaching a watershed moment. Even Suzuki, Kawasaki and Ducati are struggling to spend money as fast as Yamaha and Honda, so that gap between the top two and the mid-pack bunch may continue to grow as well. In the end, I believe that the ever increasing financial requirements to race prototype four stroke motorcycles will kill off half the grid, will prevent companies like BMW or KTM from joining and will eventually boil down to a struggle between the two giants of Honda and Yamaha.

In that vein it looks to be another Honda versus Yamaha year, with Yamaha the pre-season favorites. At the last test session in Jerez, there was a lot of talk about how some of the youngsters like Hayden, Melandri and Hopkins were the top names on the timing charts. While I’m glad to see these guys getting press and I do hope they all prove worthy of the faith people are putting into them, I personally didn’t read too much into these fast times. Any time the top guys in the class, namely Rossi, Gibernau and Biaggi aren’t topping the charts I’m willing to bet there is a reason. In this case, I believe its a sign of their experience in the series. They had one final weekend to cram before the start of the season. As a double incentive, the first race would be held at Jerez, the location of the final test. I think these teams were smart enough to put away the qualifying tires, ignore the time sheets and spent those last critical hours making sure their bike was ready for the first race.

Things are very interesting in the 250GP class, where experience also seems to have the advantage. Reigning class champion Pedrosa has been fast in testing but has generally been matched in pace by his rival from last year, the Argentinean Porto. With the first race being run on Spanish soil, Pedrosa will have the home field advantage but will have more than just Porto to worry about. Also returning from last year will be fast guys like de Puniet, Aoyama, West and de Angelis. Newcomers joining the class include last years 125 GP champ Dovizioso and 125 stars Vincent, Locatelli, Stoner, Barbera and Lorenzo. Given the relatively weak field of the 250GP class last year, this should be a much more exciting season. I think Pedrosa, Porto and de Puniet will be the ones to watch but I’m not willing to predict a champion.

The 125 GP class is full of new talent this year and with Dovizioso moving to the 250GP class there isn’t a defending champion to be the odds on favorite. The 125 class always provides close racing, perhaps the most exciting class at the GP level, and this year’s new faces mean it should be even more fun since we’ll get to watch the cream of the crop rise to the top. My best guess is that past champion and ex-250GP rider Poggiali will be the one to beat, if only because he has more experience that anyone else. He also has great motivation because if he’s not at the top, given his abysmal performance in 250s last year, he’ll be out of a job next season.

So when the green flag drops on Sunday, I hope to see a big group fighting for the lead in every class and I hope that continues throughout the whole 17 race series. But in the end, I think the earth would have to move before the bright star that is Rossi will be eclipsed. The 250s should be excellent given its depth of field and I’ll got out on a limb and say Porto will take the first race. In the 125 class, I’ll take Poggiali but it will probably be a tight pack all the way to the finish. Whoo hoo, its GP racing time again!

[image from the Italian Rai Sport web site.]

The last two Supercross races have brought two of the most visible racers back to the series after recovering from injuries and had two completely different results.

First, the bad news. As many, including myself, predicted Travis Pastrana’s return to the Supercross season was short lived. Very short lived. In fact, he made it through morning practice but crashed on the second lap of the first heat and injured his right leg. He came back a little later to win his semi-final and earn a spot on the gate for the 250 main but a gash in his leg, general body bruising and that all too frequent sense of deja-vu meant he didn’t make the race. Now I know that accidents happen and I know that Travis has sometimes been taken out in the past by other riders but really now, how many times does someone have to miss most of a season with injuries before he gets bounced off his factory ride? Sure, Travis is a PR and Marketing gold mine but if he’s on Suzuki’s insurance policy, he’s already cost them more than they would have spent just giving people free bikes. Ultimately, Travis seems to lack focus. Maybe he wants to race Supercross, maybe he wants to do Freestyle, maybe he wants to race Rally cars, maybe he wants to race SCCA cars, maybe he wants to race beach races, maybe he doesn’t know what he wants. I don’t know either. I do know the guy is talented but in the end the history books only list the folks with championship titles, not the ones that had a big fan base for a couple of years. Suzuki has given Travis more than enough chances…he isn’t spending much time on the SoBe Suzuki so give it someone with the will and focus to win.

But Travis crashing, yet again, is such small news compared to the bombshell of the Dallas SX that it is hardly worth mentioning. The real headline news was James “Bubba” Stewart. After his impressive showing at Orlando, which lead to his third crash in three races, there was still a big question mark in the air about whether Bubba could get it together. Well, consider those concerns were well and truly squashed.

Let me back up a second and give a quick re-cap of the season up until the Dallas round. Basically, the AMA Supercross season had boiled down to two riders: Ricky Carmichael and Chad Reed. In fact, it didn’t really boil down to that, it boiled down to Carmichael consistently stomping the field with Reed struggling to find the pace. Periodically, Reed would surge and get the job done but mainly it looked like RC had the whole season under control. In the last few races, RC started having uncharacteristic front end problems, leading to crashes, but generally he still seemed to be able to run a faster pace than Chad and certainly faster than anyone else. Summary: Ricky Carmichael is the best Supercross rider on the circuit. That has been the case in both SX and MX for the past few years.

Now, lets catch back up to this past weekend and Stewart’s performance. After crashing out of the lead in Orlando, Bubba apparently had that mystical moment of transcendence. All was clear and Stewart came to Dallas full of confidenceand ready to race. He then put on a showing that surely shocked everyone. From the first lap of practice he was fast but it was in the races that he really blew everyone’s mind. When the gate fell in his heat race, he pulled three bike lengths in the sprint race to turn one…that is amazing enough but Ricky Carmichael was in that heat not just a bunch of mid-pack guys. Eye opening! Within three laps, Bubba had a *six* second lead. A six second lead over the person that has demolished the Supercross field. Carmichael tried to pick up the pace and run with Stewart only to crash. Twice. Okay, so maybe RC had a problem. You can’t judge a man on one race alone.

Well, then it comes time for the main. Before the start, Bubba explained in an TV interview that he realized in Orlando that he could slow down and still win races. Whew, that’s confidence! Stewart, Carmichael, Reed, Windham and everyone else lined up for the main with all the anticipation originally built up for the opening race at Anaheim last winter. The gate drops and *boom* there goes Stewart with another two bike lead going into the first corner. Three laps later, its another six second lead this time over Reed. He pulls out to an eight second lead by mid-race, then cruises for awhile. Reed and Carmichael give chase but aren’t really getting close to the incredible lap times thrown down by the Kawasaki rider in the opening laps. With a few laps to go Bubba cranks it up again and wins easily. In the end, James “Bubba” Stewart gets his first 250 Supercross win. Reed gets taken out by a back marker and RC gets second to extend his points lead in the championship. In the post-race interview, Bubba explained that he lost his front brake after the first lap and ran the entire race without it. Wow.

What does it all mean? Well, it means that Stewart is truly an awesome rider. He’s another Galileo showing the earth isn’t flat…before this weekend everyone thought that Carmichael was the best Supercross rider in the world. Now Bubba has shattered that belief. I’m still in disbelief over what I saw. It also means that, for the first time, Ricky Carmichael’s mental strength is going to be challenged. He came apart in his heat race in Dallas so we’ll see how well he responds to this pressure for the rest of the season. As for Chad Reed, I didn’t think I could feel any more sorry for the guy but he was again a sad case after Dallas. He’s taken a beating from RC all season and dug deep to rebound again and again. Now the pressure has been ratcheted up again. How will he respond this time? And the big picture? Well, its too late for Bubba to win the SX title this season but when the outdoor Motocross season starts this summer, he could be re-writing record books every weekend.

As a final note, I do want to again commend Ricky Carmichael on his sportsmanship. When he’s been beaten this season by Chad Reed, he’s always publicly congratulated him and lauded the accomplishment. When he got trounced by Bubba at Dallas he again showed what a fantastic representative of the sport he is by being the first to congratulate Stewart and even going so far as to hold Bubba’s hand in the air. RC is not only full of talent, he’s full of class too. Bravo!

[image from the MX Large web site.]

The second World Superbike event of the season went off this past weekend with a few notable highlights.

First, the continued dominance of the Suzuki GSXRs in the hands of Troy Corser and Yukio Kagayama. In both races, the two Suzuki’s held a commanding lead over all the other bikes. For a short time in the second race it appeared that factory Ducati rider Regis Laconi had a shot at second place finish but the rain stoppage and mixed conditions restart sent him into the kitty litter rather than onto the podium. Meanwhile Corser was untouchable and Kagayama was again spectacular. In the first race, it was the Corser of old: A blazing start followed by fast laps early on while the other guys were waiting for their tires to warm up and their fuel load to go down then controlling his pace till the end. While other guys were sliding around and spinning up their tires, Corser was smooth and perfect lap after lap.

In the second race, things got more interesting. Not only did the torrential downpour reshuffle the deck taking riders like Laconi, Pitt, Neukirchner, Vermeulen and Abe out of podium contention it also gave some folks on underpowered bikes a chance to shine. The best example of this was Chris Walker who actually led on the track (though not on corrected time when combined with the times from the first leg) on the ZX-10R before overdoing it and tossing the bike down the track. Likewise, Ben Bostrom was able to move his privateer Honda into the top ten for a short time before falling back to 11th by the finish. Nieto, who didn’t finish the first race, was suddenly able to get into the top 5 in the wet race two and Corradi came from nowhere to get sixth. These are not guys we’ve seen this high up the running order so far this season.

The most fascinating detail in the second half of the second race was watching the psychological battle between Corser and teammate Kagayama. (As an aside, WSBK race announcer and racer James Haydon jumped all over this which was much better journalism that past TV announcers have offered during races. Good show, James!) Anyway, for three laps Corser and Kagayama pushed the pace faster and faster, despite the damp track, passing and re-passing each other. At one point the TV camera panned to team owner Francis Batta and he looked downright nauseous. These two know they are the class of the field right now and both were trying to get that mental edge over the other by showing they were willing to push just a little more in these tricky conditions. In the end, Kagayama went fastest but Corser still won the race based on aggregate times…this time it was another draw. Fascinating stuff to watch.

The second interesting thing highlighted by this second WSBK weekend is that they were again racing at a track which is visited by the MotoGP series. In fact, the GP boys had used Phillip Island as one of their pre-season test tracks in mid-February so there were relatively recent times available for comparison. As with Qatar, there is a contributing circumstance which means a direct overlay of times isn’t revealing the whole truth…that factor was the weather. For the WSBK weekend it was raining on and off which means that even when the track was dry, it was green without any rubber to increase traction. Nonetheless, the fastest times from both series show that there is still a big difference between the two classes of bikes.

At the February MotoGP test session, the fastest lap was a 1:29.68 thrown down by Rossi. This lap probably used a Michelin qualifying tire though its hard to know since those details aren’t always released. The fastest qualifying time for the WSBK guys on their Pirelli tires was a 1:33.24 from Kagayama. Obviously, Rossi could be a special case so looking further down the time sheets from the MotoGP session you will see that every rider ran a fastest lap under a 1:33. In fact, the slowest fastest lap time from the MotoGP test, turned in by Tony Elias on the Yamaha, was a 1:32.9 and he was supposedly slowed by physical exhaustion from the recent tests.

Just like Qatar, the lead MotoGP riders appear to be three or four seconds faster than the fastest of the WSBK riders. I’d hope that this would sink into the heads of the folks who continually question whether Troy Corser or Mat Mladin would do better on the MotoGP bikes than Roberts or Hopkins who currently hold those seats. The fact is that a production based GSXR Superbike can turn a fastest lap, with qualifying tires, of 1:33.2. The Suzuki MotoGP bike, on the other hand, turned a 1:30.8 at the hands of John Hopkins. Even Nobuatsu Aoki, the Suzuki test rider, turned a 1:32.4 on the GSV-R while testing parts (and presumably not using a qualifying tire)making him the slowest of the Suzuki MotoGP riders at the test. Also for comparison, the fastest race time from this past WSBK weekend was a 1:34.92 from Corser in the first race. Lets face it, the multi-million dollar GP bikes have a definite advantage over the production bikes, no matter how much money is thrown at the GSXRs and no matter who is sitting in the seat.

But within the context of the World Superbike series, this weekend shows that the GSXR is the most amazing bike on the track and that Corser rules the top seat of the points table. Combine this with Mat Mladin’s dominance at Daytona in the AMA series and their dominant win in the first event of the World Endurance championship and it seems like Suzuki will be selling a lot of bikes on Monday based on how well they have been performing on Sunday. Perhaps I should have called this entry “Suzuki rules…”

[image from the Suzuki web site.]

Since I left for Europe the morning after the big race day at Daytona, I didn’t get a chance to post anything on the blog about the Superbike race or the Daytona 200. They’ve been thoroughly covered on all the other sites but nonetheless I’ll say my piece…

First, the Superbike race picked up right where it left off last season with Mladin controlling the race from the first lap to the checkered flag. In the past, Suzuki has had to work fast to get their GSXR ready for the race season due to domestic test sessions being washed out by rain. Suzuki took the first step three years ago by sending the US Yoshimura squad over to Malaysia early in the year to get in some setup time before the first race. This season they went one better by heading over to southern Asia immediately after the last race of 2004’s champagne went flat. The affect has to be demoralizing for the other teams since Mladin showed up at Daytona after heading all the pre-season tests and showing dominating form from the first lap of practice. Everyone else’s best efforts were still nearly a second a lap slower than Mat. That’s a harsh start to the season for the other racers.

Every other story from the Superbike race is a bit of a stretch to make sound interesting.. The closest story worthy of some bits and bytes was Neil Hodgson’s performance. The ex-World Superbike champ learned the tricky Daytona track faster than I’m sure anyone expected and was clearly the second best person on the track. His performance highlighted one other issue, that being just how bad his teammate Eric Bostrom is struggling with the odd handling Duc. Neil was faster than Eric from the first lap, despite EBoz being a past Daytona pole sitter and having the previous year’s experience on the bike. If Eric doesn’t get something figured out soon, his stock back in Bologna will drop faster than an Italian bike manufacturer can go bankrupt. Neil, on the other hand, is showing that the Ducati 999 isn’t a complete dog which is perhaps the best the red bikes can hope for based on the thumping Mladin seems ready to hand out.

Mladin’s teammates Yates and Spies showed that the GSXRs may well sweep many races this season by consistently setting fast laps in Superbike. Continuing this trend, the customer Suzukis from Team Jordan and Team M4 finished top 10 as well. The Hondas, meanwhile, showed that they should probably have done some time Malaysia this winter since they are way behind compared to their historical trend of heading the speed gun measurements at Daytona. Their decision to bring Superbike development in house may pay rewards in the future but they have to make some huge strides before the second race at the end of April if they are gonna have a chance of slowing Maldin’s march to a sixth title or stop Suzuki from ruling the podium all season.

So with that bleak outlook off my chest, how about a review of the Daytona 200? Well, I’m afraid the news there isn’t much better as it was even more predictable than the Superbike race. As expected, all three podium spots were filled with the Hondas. Duhamel was the commanding winner with Roberts and Zemke completing the rostrum. Perhaps the biggest surprise was that the forth Honda of Alex Gobert was outside the top ten. The only interesting part of the Daytona 200 was watching the three youngsters of Eslick, Peris and Perez go through their trials of Daytona 200 crashes and pit stop fiascoes to card respectable finishes. Like in years past, the Daytona 200 was an interesting race up until the first pit stops, then changes in pit strategy and problems lapping slower riders strung the field out. Roberts and Duhamel actually put on an entertaining show for the first 10 or so laps. Nonetheless, Duhamel does deserve credit for putting a fifth Daytona 200 trophy on his mantle despite the criticism raised by others. No matter how much people try to downplay his achievement, winning the 200 is a trial of man and machine as much as a competition against other racers. Being able to race hard for two hours is reason enough to garner respect.

In my opinion, Saturday at Daytona lived up to expectations but that is only because the results were generally predictable and the expectations rather low. The classes were still confusing and not having all the factories competing in a single class just amplified that. Thankfully, also as predicted, there weren’t the tire problems that the past years have demonstrated so now its a matter of putting the excitement back into the premier class (or classes). Otherwise, the “support” classes will gain more popularity since both of those races were exciting and unpredictable. Lets hope the AMA Superbike and F-X seasons turns out to hold some big surprises…

Finally, I wanted to at least acknowledge that I’ve been pretty monotonous in using photos of guys doing big burn-outs in my blog entries. As penance I’ll say ten hail Rossis and try to find some different cool photos for future write-ups.

[image from Tim Huntington’s Web Page.]

I’m back from our Edelweiss tour of the Andalucia region of Spain and we had a great time. I have put some photos up on our travel web site:

Some of the highlights from our trip were:

1) The art and architecture in Barcelona - Jonna and I are both big art fans so the works by Gaudi, Picasso, Miro, Dali and Goya were all incredible to see. The Miro museum and some of Gaudi’s buildings like Sagrada Familia and La Pedrera were particular highlights.

2) The roads in Spain - I don’t think that Andalucian civil engineers own rulers because their roads are all curvy, even the ones that go through flat areas. There may be no obvious reason for a road to have a turn but damned if there won’t be curves left, right and center. The road surfaces aren’t always great but on a big BMW GS that didn’t really matter.

3) The scenery is stunning - Andalucia is nearly all mountains and hills. The highest peaks around over 4,000 ft high which doesn’t sound like much until you realize its only 50 miles from beach to mountain top. What makes this even better is that fact that Spain has set aside large areas for National Parks and Nature Preserves, so a days ride is pretty much guaranteed to be beautiful.

4) History is everywhere - Whether it is Cathaginian, Roman, Moorish, Medieval or Renaissance there is something interesting nearly everywhere. We particularly enjoyed towns like Granada and Ronda which seem to have focused on preserving their Moorish past. The Alhambra is incredible and justifies a trip to Granada all by itself. We also enjoyed the Pueblas Blancas, the white villages, which are in the hills of central Andalucia. These towns seem frozen in time as they existed during Medieval times. Nice!

5) The food - Jonna had some incredible meals, though I’m admit that Spain isn’t the most vegetarian friendly country so I had pretty limited options (salad, cheese sandwiches and spaghetti). Still the ability to stop and get tapas, small appetizers served in bars, meant that we could try lots of different things whenever we wanted. Being near the coast much of the time meant Jonna got plenty of great seafood and also got to try regional favorites like paella and Andalucian beef.

6) That Spain is so bike mad - Like our trip to Italy, its always cool to be in a country where everyone rides and appreciates motorcycles. MotoGP is one of the most popular sports second only to Soccer. The MotoGP boys were in both Catalunya and Jerez while we were visiting and large crowds showed up just to watch the guys *practice*. Sunday’s timed laps were actually shown live on TV. GP stars like Gibernau, Pedrosa and Rossi were used in advertisements everywhere, even in clothing shops. If only America was so interested in motorcycle racing!

Now that I’m back, I’ll try to get caught up on some things I missed like a review of Daytona, the SX races in Orlando, the final MotoGP tests and this weekend’s World Superbike race in Australia.

[image from my photo collection.]