Westy set fastest time in 1 minute 43.837 seconds on the Kawasaki Ninja ZX-RR - an amazing performance in his MotoGP debut on a track so slippery that riders' reps
Valentino Rossi and
Loris Capirossi complained about it to the safety commission on Friday night.
"But he's got nothing to lose," someone said. That's trash: over the remaining 11 races of this season West has to prove his ability to Kawasaki in order to confirm his place next season as the factory continues to develop what is clearly a great bike. He's not gonna help his cause by casting a £250,000 (I'm guessing the value) motorcycle down the road every session, no matter how fast his individual lap times might be.
Where does Westy get that concert-pianist delicacy in the wet? It's that old Aussie heritage story: "I did a lot of dirt-track racing before I went road racing, just sliding the bike and learning throttle control."
Westy's certainly been putting in the work ethic here at Donington: before this morning's warm-up he had completed 95 laps in wet and dry on the 800cc in-line four.
The previous rider to win a senior-class race on his debut was Max Biaggi in the Japanese GP in 1998. Of course, by that time Max had already won four 250cc world titles.
Anthony West comes without that experience. Go, Westy, go and give us a great underdog story!
Saturday 3.15pm - EXCLUSIVE! Edwards: I'm not going back to WSBK!
After 73 starts and more than four years of trying,
Colin Edwards may just have lined himself up for his first ever win in MotoGP with his blazing pole position effort in qualifying at
Donington Park this afternoon.
The 33-year-old Texan - a massive crowd favourite because of his big-heart approach to racing - ripped around the 2.5-mile circuit in 1 minute 28.531 seconds to score the second pole position of his career.
It comes shortly after an exclusive interview with
Crash.net in which he said categorically: "I'm not going back to WSBK!"
"I should never say never," Edwards continued. "But at the moment WSBK is not on my agenda. I want to stay in
MotoGP."
Many have assumed that Edwards would return gracefully to WSBK in 2008, where he won world titles in 2000 and 2002. Yamaha need to breed the equivalent of a
Casey Stoner or a
Dani Pedrosa young lion and are rumoured to have signed the 20-year-old 250cc world champion
Jorge Lorenzo for next year.
