Sunday pm - Hopkins Could Win in the Final Six
After his career-best finish on the Rizla Suzuki at the Czech Republic Grand Prix,
John Hopkins now knows that he has a realistic chance of winning his first ever MotoGP race in the six rounds that remain before the season ends at Valencia on November 4.
He was 7.9 seconds behind
Casey Stoner and the Ducati Marlboro after 22 laps of the 3.6-mile Brno circuit, but team boss Paul Denning points out that Hopkins rolled it off on the final circuit, and that if he had pushed the GSV-R to the flag the real gap would have been around four seconds.
Well, racing is full of might-have expressions, but there is no doubt that the 24-year-old American could top the podium if the Stoner-Ducati-
Bridgestone combo fails to find the hotspot setup on a race weekend.
Brno will have been worrying for Dorna - and for
James Toseland, who will have been watching it on TV. The race was dull, more like a Formula 1-style procession in the worst of the grim Schumacher years than the kind of melée for the lead that we associate with
MotoGP. We have to hope that Honda can finally provide
Nicky Hayden with the kind of package that unleashed his fire in the closing races of last year.
Toseland, who joins Yamaha Tech 3 in 2008, must have felt apprehension at seeing
Valentino Rossi on the best Michelin-shod Yamaha finish 22.485 seconds behind Stoner, and 9.385 seconds behind Hayden, the best Michelin runner.
Rossi claimed that he "wasn't even able to try to fight" because of a lack of grip on the YZR-M1. It leaves Yamaha looking as though they are floundering, but Valentino's spirit must surely have been dulled by the tax avoidance charges suddenly unleashed on him by the Italian authorities.
MotoGP chief Carmelo Ezpeleta correctly points out that the revenue guys should have first dealt with the matter privately with Rossi and given him the chance to defend himself.
Sunday am - Rossi Tests 'Pneumatic' Yamaha
Fiat Yamaha team manager Davide Brivio is making no secret of the fact that they're going to test an M1 with pneumatically-operated valve gear at Brno on Monday. And Valentino Rossi could race the bike this season if it proves to be faster than the current valve-spring machine
and reliable.
