First and foremost this morning, my best wishes go out to Jeremy Burgess whose wife has been diagnosed with breast cancer. I’m sure we all send all the warmth and encouragement that we can to the family at this time. Jeremy has flown home to be at his wife’s side and won’t be attending the 8th round of the MotoGp world championship this weekend at Mugello.
Mugello is a very fast track. MotoGp bikes achieve over 330 km/h on its long straight and the track has been resurfaced during the off-season so expect lap times to drop dramatically into the bargain.
Here’s how Repsol Honda ace, Andrea Dovizioso sees it.
Thanks to mcnews.com.au for this very helpful graphic.
Casey Stoner arrives at Mugello with a 28 point lead over Jorge Lorenzo whose championship defence is flagging badly. The Honda is the fastest bike out there just now and this is a speed track. Repsol will be boosted by the return of Dani Pedrosa who will be riding for pride this season unless something extraordinary happens. Simoncelli will surely have to finish this race intact and without cutting up anyone else to be considered a serious contender for 2012. He has admitted his fault at Assen, but that can’t be much consolation to Lorenzo who will have to contend with FOUR fast Hondas this weekend.
And what of Rossi? Well, the GP11.1 experiment wasn’t a huge success, despite halving the distance Vale was behind Spies by the end of the race. 20+ seconds is still an eternity in grand prix terms. You can bet that Ducati will be puling out all the stops to try and give him a good bike for his “home” race, but comments from the champion himself during the week indicate that he has already consigned this season to the scrapheap and is building for 2012.
Ian Wheeler’s excellent photo might have summed it up well.
crash.net published an interesting article on how many riders have won MotoGp races during the 800cc era and crystal-balling as to how long it may take for Spies to win his next race. HERE’s the article. Records are meant to be broken, of course, but expectations amongst the US media that Spies has now joined the ranks of the immortals after just one MotoGp win are as ludicrous as they are widespread at the moment.
Back to normal timetable for racing this weekend. Sunday night. As always, check your local guides for details.
STOP PRESS: Pramac Ducati have announced that Loris Capirossi will miss this weekend’s race as a result of his accident last weekend. I haven’t been able to confirm if 125cc class leader, Nico Terol will be competing as yet. Terol suffered a terrible injury to his hand at Assen and was looking at having part of a finger amputated due to the damage. News as it comes to hand…sorry ’bout that.