"We used the second bike, but we didn't know the engine setup so we just made sure we were safe in case I was fighting at the front," he said. "But the engine wasn't revving out, and I lost quite a lot of places at the start. Once I found my way, we didn't do too badly. To come away with two points is a lot better than sitting out the race."
Bradley now has two weeks to let his injured right hand heal before his home round at
Donington on June 22.
Sunday am – Wait Before You Panic About the New 600s
Details of the new 600cc support class will start to be fleshed out at a meeting at the Dutch TT later in June, according to Dorna's Carmelo Ezpeleta. Manufacturers will be asked if they are interested in supporting the category for in-line fours, which is scheduled to replace the 250cc class in 2011.
Change fosters paranoia. So we can expect plenty of doomy forecasts about the proposed developments. Remember the near-panic that set in when WSB declared that it was going one-make-tyre? The series survives and prospers.
The objectives of the new 600cc class appear reasonable. The bikes must be:
• Inexpensive
• Prototypes
• Multi-adjustable, to train riders to set up
MotoGP machines
Apparently, the engine may not necessarily be based on one of the current street 600s. A small-batch maker could design the unit and make it available to all the teams. Chassis would be pure prototypes, and each team could make its own or buy one from a chassis maker.
Aprilia, who currently supply 80 percent of the 250cc grid, are unenthusiastic. It's not just the loss of business that upsets the firm's road racing vice-president Giampiero Sacchi: he would welcome competition from other manufacturers in the 250cc division.
"I'm thinking about the entire philosophy of our sport," he told me. "We have already reduced the number of classes [there used to be six in the 1960s, from 50cc bikes to sidecars]. They are trying to focus all the attention on the MotoGP class. But it's a 45-minute race, not a two-hour one like
Formula 1, and it won't support the entire race day."
Sunday am – Stoner Has Race Tyres to Back the Pole Lap
Will
Casey Stoner be able to back up his pole position lap of 1m 41.186s in qualifying with race-long consistency today over 25 laps of Montmelò?
It's possible. Earlier in that qualifying window he put in a string of four laps on race tyres in the high-42s and low-43s.
But it
was only four laps. And
Valentino Rossi was not that far behind on race rubber, despite his lowly ninth fastest in qualifying. Early in the session he ran a string of high to low 1-43s.
