Sunday pm - Toseland Tests at Clermont: 'Can Hit Podiums'
While some
MotoGP teams are staying on at Le Mans to test on Monday and Tuesday, Yamaha Tech 3 riders
Colin Edwards and
James Toseland will head to Michelin's private test track at Clermont Ferrand this week. They will try new rubber options on Tuesday and Wednesday, in an attempt to help the French manufacturer in its war with
Bridgestone.
Tech 3 chief Hervé Poncharal also remains confident that Toseland has podium potential in him this year, despite his current slump to ninth place in the points table.
"Remember what happened at Qatar when James almost got pole with a one-year-old engine, down on power, and he finished sixth in the race," Poncharal said. "At
Jerez he had the same old engine, and he was suffering from a fever, but he was sixth again."
Toseland is now in the middle of a string of five races at tracks on which he has never raced, but Poncharal believes that a podium will come for JT when the series reaches his more familiar terrain starting with
Donington Park on June 22. He has raced on eight of the 11 tracks then to come: no one has competed at the new-to-MotoGP Indianapolis venue.
The team is writing off as a racing incident Toseland's fall at Le Mans today after a clash with
Andrea Dovizioso. The Italian has a slightly different version, claiming that "James hit me very hard from behind. My leather suit shows marks from his tyre and also the bike has some black rubber marks on the rear part of it."
Oh well...
Sunday pm - Lorenzo Listens to Himself, not the Doubters
Well,
Jorge Lorenzo ignored the doubters and the carpers who said he should have withdrawn from the French MotoGP both for his own sake and that of fellow riders, and wheeled the Fiat Yamaha into second place. He never put a wheel wrong, and never looked like a menace to others on his way from tenth place on the grid.
