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October 27, 2004 |
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MOTOGP - VALENCIA - PREVIEW |
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Ducati Corse Press
The Ducati MotoGP Team comes to Valencia for the final race of the year following a morale-boosting Australian GP. Loris Capirossi scored a storming third-place finish at Phillip Island, the team’s first podium result of the year, to put the Italian-based crew in optimistic mood for Valencia. Team-mate Troy Bayliss also enjoyed a strong ride at his home GP and comes to Spain hoping for another good result.
DUCATI MOTOGP MEN IN GOOD SPIRITS FOR SEASON FINALE
“We come to Valencia with smiles on our faces,” says Ducati MotoGP Team director Livio Suppo. “It seems like our season started at Phillip Island, so now we can only hope to finish it really well at the final race. It’s been a challenging second year for us in MotoGP – we’ve never stopped working and the bike has been getting better all the time. After improving the engine and chassis midseason we lacked a little luck until we got to Australia, where we were back where we are meant to be – on the front row and on the podium. We also stayed on to test at Phillip Island, acquiring plenty of information that will help our winter development work as we work towards building our 2005 MotoGP bike.”
Valencia is one of the slowest tracks in MotoGP racing, but that doesn’t make it an easy venue for riders and their engineers. “Valencia is a very strange track – very stop-and-go in character,” explains Ducati MotoGP Team technical director Corrado Cecchinelli. “Engine rideability and traction are the crucial performance factors. And there are some very tricky sections – like the final fast left, which riders tackle with full throttle and very little load on the rear tyre as they crest the brow of the hill. We don’t plan to alter the engine mapping for such a tight and slow circuit – we prefer that our riders stay familiar with the bike’s behaviour from one track to another, so they know exactly how it reacts.”
BAYLISS AIMS TO END SEASON ON HIGH NOTE
Troy Bayliss has already raced to victory at Valencia – when he was competing in the World Superbike series for Ducati Corse – so the Ducati MotoGP Team rider knows the fast way around the tight little Spanish circuit. This time the Aussie will be aiming for a good result to end the 2004 season.
“I’ve always enjoyed myself at Valencia,” says the 2001 World Superbike champion. “I’ve had some good times on a Ducati Superbike there. But the place is much more difficult on a MotoGP bike, simply because you’ve got so much horsepower and there’s so little room to use it at Valencia. It’s pretty much all tight little slow-speed turns, so you never get to even use full throttle for more than a couple of seconds at a time, until you get around to the start-finish. We had a good test session there at the end of last year, so we hope we can carry some of that into the final race of the season.”
THE TRACK
Valencia is the second-slowest circuit in GP racing with an average lap speed of just 154kmh, marginally faster than Estoril. Most of the track’s corners are slow, in-and-out turns, grouped closely together, this unusual layout affording spectators a mostly unobstructed view of the entire circuit – a real rarity in the world of motorsport. It’s an immensely physical circuit with riders afforded little rest between bouts of heavy acceleration, braking and cornering.
This weekend Valencia hosts its sixth Grand Prix after featuring on the World Championship calendar for the first time in 1999. The circuit is one of several recently created in Spain, where motorcycling racing is the nation’s second most popular sport, after football. The venue is officially christened the Ricardo Tormo circuit, in honour of the late Spanish rider, a former 50cc World Champion.
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