Almost worth letting Hatz out of the killefile for a week.
Someone should run a book on what excuses he'll use. My picks: 1- Michelin sabotaged Rossi 2- Hayden cheated....somehow 3- The evil Spaniards poisoned Rossi's breakfast 4- Hayden is a "weight cheat" 5- "Honda don't win any F1 races!!"
Well in all fairness, that was a bloody convincing 1,2 - although I think Hayden could have split it if he really wanted to. He'd have been nuts to push any harder, he had to keep the thing on the rubber. Great to see vindication of Bayliss, I thought Ducati shafted him, but then he did nothing on the Honda, so I figured I was wrong and he really wasn't quite up to it. Goes to show winning a bike race is more about the mental attitude than anything else - a season of consistently winning and he was in the right head space - nothing to lose and everything to gain. I suspect Ducati may give Stoner more chance to prove himself and not be quite as quick with the sword if he's not winning by the second race as well. Even better for a lot of good riders, the SBK championship will no longer be seen as second rate - if Bayliss can win at GP then the guys beating him occasionally are probably capable of winning too. Rossi is taking it on the chin, but if you saw the way it was sliding around from the get go, I think he may have had dodgy tyres or the wrong tyre choice - I was pretty bleary eyed by the time the race came on but it seemed to me he saved it about 5 times before he decked it. Did anyone see a report of what happened to Stoner ? He was charging along and the next thing you know he's going backwards to a DNF - what broke ?
http://www.superbikeplanet.com/2006/Oct/tb/061029p.htm "Today I really I wanted to get a nice result for myself and the LCR team. But it's strange, I don't know what is happening -- so many times recently we are fast in practices and have the perfect race set-up, the perfect tyre and then the bike feels nothing like it does in practice. Today it just wouldn't turn like it did in practice. I'm really disappointed, after everything was so sweet at the start of the season. But I want give a big thanks to the whole LCR team who gave me this opportunity and stuck with me this year."
Yeah but when the Ducati is good,it's really good, and when it's not they're lucky to get above 10th. Was it Brno where Capirossi just pissed off into the distance and Rossi couldn't even get within 10 seconds of him ? The next race Rossi won and Capirossi barely made points. JL (or something vaguely like that I'm not the Clemopaedia !)
Thanks that confirms that Rossi had tyre or setup problems - Colin is quoted as saying something similar (and he can be frank without it looking like excuses) "Well, obviously that was a disaster from all angles! After two or three laps I lost the front a couple of times but I'm not really sure why. We chose a soft front here but it was the same one as in Motegi and Estoril and it had worked great all weekend here. Today it was quite a lot hotter so maybe that's what did for us. Basically from then on I couldn't turn it properly, I had to put it all on the knee and slow right down to turn, otherwise I was going straight on. I was really feeling that I might crash any minute and I had to follow Hopkins for the whole race; without any corner speed I just couldn't get the jump to pass him." Disappointing. I hope he gets sorted next year. JL
With the rider standing between him and second place being a good mate of Rossi's who also happens to have a history of dirty tricks behind him... they breed them dumb in Kentucky, but not quite that dumb.
<grin> Yeah, they did replay that 250's race before the GP where Capirossi took someone out (Harada ?) to get the championship. I would have thought however that he has been the complete gentleman ever since - I can't recall a single instance since then of Loris playing dirty pool. A bit like Pedrosa I think it was a salutary lesson for him. Still Hayden didn't need to, and the smart move was of course to ease up and make sure he didn't crash. Dicing for the win would have been foolhardy. Speaking of Dani, I couldn't believe the stupid commentators. Dani pulls over and waggles his left foot for Hayden to overtake him (lap 3 I think ?) and the dickhead pommy guy says something about him making a mistake and running wide. Good lord ! He's trying to make up for his faux pas in Portugal and the same dickhead who carried out for half the race about the crash at Estoril can't even recognise it. I think he's been forgiven now JL
and the dickhead pommy guy says something about him making a mistake and running wide. I miss Barry Sheene..
Yeah, that excitable English guy seems to get things wrong pretty often. He also seems to be a pretty big Rossi fan. The commentators on the Channel Ten coverage spent more time talking about Michael Jordan than covering the race.
