News in this morning that Taree’s Alex Cudlin (2011 Qatar Superbike Champion) has scored a wildcard with the QMMT Team in the Moto2 race at Le Mans this weekend. After his brother, Damian’s, sterling Moto2 debut at the Sachsenring last year where he ran as high as 4th on the Kalex bike, this is another great Aussie success story. The Cudlin brothers are certainly stars of the future. Last weekend Damian got 3rd overall in Round 1 of the German Superbike Championship (he won the Supersport title last year). So, all the best for the weekend, Alex.
In other news, the Italian press (there they go again – where would we be without them?) went into semi-meltdown on the weekend when MotoGp star, Marc Simoncelli was seen in the WSBK pits at Monza last weekend trying on Johnny Rae’s Ten Kate CBR1000R for size. The Gresini team has been forced to issue a stern denial of any wildcard aspirations for the afroe’d Italian in the WSBK arena. You’d remember that Simo did wildcard once before at Imola on the Aprilia as a “thank you” gift from the factory for him winning the 250cc title. He turned a few established heads that day, too. So, no Simo in WSBK any time soon.
And, on the subject of Aprilia WSBK, they tested at Misano yesterday and Biaggi apparently broke the lap record in testing. To underline my continued frustration with the lack of results from the “works” BMW team, they also tested at Misano and both Corser and Haslam were only fractions of a second behind Biaggi’s times. So, why can’t they duplicate that in races, is my question?
Oh, and to the ongoing war of words between Rossi and Stoner, we can now add the war of words that has broken out between Marco Simoncelli and Jorge Lorenzo. Motoblog’s Luca Ruggeri has come up with his own take on the battle.
Roughly translated, Simo is saying, “Sorry, I didn’t see you.” and Lorenzo is thinking to himself, “Goat.”
On a personal note, today is my wife and I’s 38th wedding anniversary. What an amazing woman she is to have put up with me for this long. You definitely do get less time for murder.
That’s all for this morning. Have a great day. Tomorrow I’ll publish a more detailed preview of the French GP that’s coming up this weekend.