WSBK » Ducati Xerox confirms Haga, Fabrizio

Bout time they announced this , Haga will be a hit the italians love him anyway and now that he is riding a duke it is a match made in heaven. I just hope for his sake he can start the season better than he normally does then he will definately be in with a chance for the championship, ive got no worries about nori not being able to ride the duke as haga is one of those riders that could ride any bike and ride it well.
Good luck Nori for 2009 .... i cant wait !

Worst kept secret going lol but glad it is now official. I don't care what he rides, he's a demon and i'm really hopeful that this will give him the title he deserves after coming close so many times. He needs to be consistent as you say Octane and here's hoping he is. Got my fingers crossed, toes crossed and me eyes which makes it really hard to watch the telly

Go #41!

I just hope for his sake the new big-bang R1 isn't too good!

At last, but I think Nori rode a Ducati years ago in the Japan championship.
Now lets hope its fast enough next year.

cant wait to see his testing times during the closed season on a carbon black Duc.

Crash - how about a little poll to see who's the all-time favorite WSB rider.....vote now type of thing.

Corser, Russell, Fogarty, Polen, Merkel, the list goes on, there's been some great riders............toss up between Corser & Fogarty for me!

cheers

Not sure he did, think he's Yamaha's boy Sharkie but he did ride the Renegade Ducati (everyone seen that excellent pic of Nori doing a wildcard at Oulton Park where the bike in front turned into a ball of flames? ) and rode it very well when the bloody thing wasn't breaking down

Go #41!

Biaggi miffed ya reckon?

Crash.net: Here is a link for the Haga fire pic...

http://www.crash.net/picture_large.asp?cid=18&pic=124303&Search=cid=18$category_id=0$event_id=0$search_string=haga%20fire$pid=1

I think that Shakey may surprise a couple of factory riders as he has the talent and experience to be the front running Ducati for the first few rounds as Haga will have to adapt and Fabrizio just is not there. Wonder if they would consider doing a Bostrom and swapping teams if things went really well for a non-factor rider?

We will find out soon enough.

Biaggi will just use this as ammo to try and beat them next year. Testing the RSV4 for the first time today. C'mon Max!

Good luck to Nori anyway.

I agree Sharkie, Nori definitely rode a privateer Ducati in the Japanese superbike championships before opting for Yamaha. He then had outings in WSBK at Sugo where he scored a couple of wildcard wins.

Good luck to Nori - he will need to take his training seriously over the winter if he is to start strongly. Nori doesn't normally produce great times in testing, but I suspect he will have to work harder in a factory team and Tardozzi will get him and keep him motivated.

I'm sure they could have done better than Fabrizio. When they had Bayliss the second rider seemed to be someone cheap who wouldn't take any points off the number one rider. I expect Nori to outride Fabrizio next year so the same will happen again. Maybe Fabrizio is a good, hard working development rider - Ducati have had problems attracting quality test riders - I can't think of any other reason to keep him on.