Archive - Apr 2008 - News Item

An intriguing bit of news appeared over on GPOne.com over the past couple of days. Their main MotoGP reporter, Alberto Cani, writes that Yamaha is getting ready to finalize its plans for 2009. And the first item on the agenda for Yamaha supremo Lin Jarvis is the rider line up.

HRC's on-again-off-again testing of their pneumatic valve engine is about to shift up a gear. After electing not to test the air valve engine for the RC212V at Estoril, the new powerplant could make an appearance at Shanghai in China.

Marco Melandri has something of a reputation for speaking out whenever he's not happy. Melandri's outburst about the weakness of the Honda RC212V, and HRC's reneging on promises of full factory support for the Gresini Honda team are still ringing in the ears of both Honda officials and journalists, and now Melandri is at it again.

Conflicting reports are emerging from Italy about the future of Nicky Hayden in MotoGP. On the one hand, we have MotoGrandPrix.it, who are reporting that Hayden is close to signing a new 2-year contract with Repsol Honda.

The excellent and amusing Dutch newspaper columnist Bert Wagendorp wrote recently of the 2008 Beijing Olympics "If you really hate a country, you should let them organize the Olympic games." Ever since the announcement that China was to organize the olympics, there has been a growing movement of protest about the human rights situation in the Chinese heartland and in Tibet.

That 200 mph racing motorcycles with carbon disk brakes capable of braking at close to 2G of force place demands on the human body is self evident. The repeated effort of bearing the equivalent of twice your own bodyweight on your forearms several times a lap can cause enormous pain in a condition known as Chronic exertional compartment syndrome (CECS), more colloquially referred to as arm pump.

Saturday afternoon's qualifying practice session started warm and dry, conditions better than on Friday afternoon, when the session had started with a cool track. The riders had also had the benefit of a dry practice session in the morning, in which they had all improved their Friday times, and race setups were starting to materialize.

Ever since the start of Kawasaki's MotoGP project, one of its main problems has been the lack of a rider capable of winning championships, to help push the development of the bike forward. Their signing of John Hopkins in a multi-million dollar deal went some way to address that issue, but Team Green's ambitions are obviously much higher.

British MotoGP fans can finally breathe a collective sigh of relief. There had been much speculation (and a great deal of fear) that Yamaha would hold back the air spring engines after both Colin Edwards and James Toseland had put in outstanding performances at Qatar and Jerez, to ensure that the Tech 3 riders didn't get in Valentino Rossi's way in his fight to reclaim the MotoGP title.

It's been no secret that Marco Melandri has had a terrible time adapting to the GP8 since hist switch to Ducati at the end of the year. And Melandri is not the only rider to suffer: both Toni Elias and Sylvain Guintoli have struggled aboard the Ducati for the satellite Alice team. Yet reigning world champion Casey Stoner continues to dominate the MotoGP class, despite his recent setbacks at Jerez.

Although we are not much given to rehashing race team press releases here at MotoGPMatters.com, much preferring to go searching for actual news, from time to time, we get sent something which captures our imagination. Anthony Murphy, A reader of the site sent us a link to the Kawasaki Racing website, with a video of Kawasaki's new screamer engine.

It was MotoGP's least favorite destination for any number of reasons: It was half a world away from most teams' headquarters; there was minimal local interest; the track was designed for Formula 1, which made for poor motorcycle racing; the track was located miles from the city; the air quality was appalling, on a good day; and the journalists which cover MotoGP were kept on a tight leash by the authorities, in case they said anything wrong about the host country.

GPOne.com is reporting that Jorge Martinez of Aspar may look elsewhere for MotoGP bikes for 2009. Aspar has made no secret of his intention to enter MotoGP next season, and his name has long been linked with Suzuki.