"The Alice team’s performance depends entirely on the riders," he said frankly. "Sylvain did a better job at Assen [he finished tenth], and Toni is finally waking up a bit this weekend [he starts 12th on the grid]."
It’s really hard to see those two keeping retaining their rides next year now that the team manager’s interest has been stirred by fresher faces. He clearly does sympathise with Melandri’s psychological problems, but offered this comment:
"At the moment no man on earth is capable of doing what
Casey Stoner is doing. On the other hand, it’s difficult to understand why Marco is struggling so much."
He declined to comment on whether the Italian would be replaced by Sete Gibernau at Brno.
Saturday pm - And Suppo on Points and MotoGP’s Bike Shortage
Suppo also criticized the scoring system in grand prix racing, which awards points down to 15th place. It means that in the 17-bike race at the Sachsenring - Kawasaki’s
John Hopkins is out due to injury - there only have to be two falls or retirements and every finisher is guaranteed championship points. Even when there’s an 18-bike grid it’s hardly difficult to pick up a point or two.
"This is my opinion and not Ducati’s, but it would be more than enough if the points were restricted to the top ten finishers," he said. "It just makes more sense when there are only 18 starters."
Asked why Ducati - the smallest factory competing in
MotoGP - was able to field four bikes when Suzuki and Kawasaki put only two on the grid, he said he had raised the matter at a meeting of the MSMA (the Motorcycle Sports Manufacturers’ Association).
He was told that because some of the factories are constantly developing their machines, they don’t feel confident enough to supply bikes to satellite teams.
But because of its small size and limited resources, Ducati operates a different policy with its Alice partners.
“We don’t have any updates throughout the season for the satellite bikes. That is our tradition,” he said.
Those words contradict comments from the Alice Team this weekend, which stated that its GP8s
had been updated and were now 'exactly the same' as the factory bikes.
Saturday pm - Toseland’s 112-Lap Learning Curve
It wasn’t the smartest thing for
James Toseland to do when he binned the Tech 3 Yamaha on only the third lap of practice for the German grand prix yesterday.
