Jorge Martinez appears to be struggling to find a replacement rider for Julian Simon, badly injured in “that” crash with Kenan Sofoglu at Catlunya.
After choosing CEV Moto2 rider Jordi Torres for the British GP, who unfortunately DNF’d in the very wet race, Martinez has decided to give another rider a chance to debut internationally and this time has chosen a female racer, Elena Rosell for the upcoming Assen GP.
25-year-old Rosell currently races in Extreme Stock series of the CEV championship and fourth in the standings, will be the first woman to compete in a GP race since Katja Poensgen took part in the now defunct 250cc championship eight years ago. It’s to be hoped that Rosell rides better than the aforementioned Poensgen as, if I recall, Katja’s role on the grid was purely decorative.
Like I say, Katja was pretty but she wasn’t fast.
In other racing news, Australia’s Cameron Donald has been recruited by the Honda Legends team to ride with John McGuinness and Keith Amor in the Suzuka 8 Hour race at the end of July. This is a big break for Donald and a huge blow for the incumbent, Steve Plater, who finds that his recovery from injury is not progressing as hoped and that he will miss the race. Suzuka is Honda’s own track and they always make a superhuman effort to win “at home” as the race is the most prestigious one on the domestic racing calendar. The addition of Donald to the “works” team makes it a formidable one indeed.
In WSBK at Aragon in Spain, Marco Melandri gave himself his first Superpole last night and continued to mark the resurgence of Yamaha as a potential force in the class. In less stellar news, the “works” BMW’s again prop up the back end of the field, qualifying 14th and 16th and nearly 2 seconds off the pace set by Melandri. I seriously doubt that BMW have any idea what they are doing. They should shut the team down, sack the engineers and start again from scratch.
Had a nice run up to the Pie Shop today and spent some time admiring the machinery and bench racing with the boys. Very pleasant way to spend a Sunday afternoon.