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Bridgestone press release from Brno |
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Posted by Staff
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Wednesday, 20 August 2008 |
Rossi wins in Brno as Bridgestone
riders take top honours
Round 12: Czech Republic – Race Automotodrom Brno – Sunday 17 August
2008
Fiat Yamaha
rider Valentino Rossi has this afternoon claimed his fifth win of the season at
the Czech Republic Grand Prix, leading an all-Bridgestone podium in a race which
saw the top eight places occupied by riders using Bridgestone tyres. It is
Bridgestone’s best combined result in MotoGP, beating the previous best top six
result from Turkey 2007, and the tyre manufacturer’s third
consecutive win
in Brno.
Second
place went to Alice Team’s Toni Elias who stormed through the field from 13th on
the grid to claim his and the team’s first podium result of the season after a heroic
ride aboard his Ducati. Loris Capirossi also made a welcome and well deserved
return to the
podium in third place, increasing Rizla Suzuki’s run of podiums to three
consecutive races.
San Carlo Honda Gresini enjoyed a competitive afternoon with Shinya
Nakano making strong headway during the race to take fourth place, just four seconds off the
podium, and setting the third fastest lap of the race overall. Kawasaki’s
Anthony West had his most competitive event of the year with a fine fifth place,
ahead of the Suzuki of Chris Vermeulen in sixth, Marco Melandri in
seventh for
Ducati and the Alex De Angelis in eighth for Honda Gresini.
As a result of
his victory, Rossi has extended his lead of the world championship to fifty
points with early race leader Casey Stoner not scoring after retiring from the 22-lap
event on the seventh lap. Stoner still holds second in the ranking and
demonstrated his sheer pace around the resurfaced Brno circuit by laying claim to the
fastest lap of the race, smashing the existing record by almost
one second.
Hiroshi Yamada – Bridgestone Motorsport – Manager, Motorcycle Sport Unit “I am very pleased with the results that we
have achieved across all six of our teams during this weekend in Brno and I’d
like to extend
my thanks to each of them for their efforts. We had our most successful
qualifying performance of the season in the rain yesterday, which has been followed by
our best ever race result in the dry this afternoon. Congratulations
to Valentino and Yamaha for another win, their fifth of the season, which adds
another 25 points to their championship total. Casey was very
unfortunate and
it is a shame that he could not capitalise on the strong form that he has
demonstrated this weekend. Brno has been a good track for us in recent years
and it is nice to continue our winning streak in this year’s event. with Toni
and Loris also scoring their first podiums of the season.”
Tohru Ubukata – Bridgestone Motorsport – Manager, Motorcycle Race Tyre Development “Our tyres were able to help many of our
riders obtain really good results in today’s race and it shows that our approach
and our tyre
choice were generally correct for this new surface. After a positive Friday, we
lost a lot of important dry weather running in Saturday’s wet sessions, which
prevented us from understanding the behaviour of the tyres over longer
distances. The new asphalt is particularly tough on the front tyre and, unfortunately,
Chris and Sylvain experienced front-end difficulties which did not
allow them to
challenge as high up the field as their practice pace suggested they could. John
also had a difficult race after a great start, losing rear grip which gradually
dropped him down the order. Nevertheless, considering the difficult situation
with the new track surface, I think today’s result is a great achievement for
us.”
Valentino Rossi – Fiat Yamaha
Team – Race Winner and Championship Leader ”I was confident today because my bike was fast from Friday
practice, and with Jeremy we made a small modification to the front
after warm-up to
allow me to be a bit faster in some sections, and it worked very well. I lost
about half a second getting past Hopkins at the start and Casey was
incredibly fast at that stage, like he’d already done ten laps! For a short time
I was worried but then, after two laps, I understood that my bike was
working very well and that I was fast enough to try to catch him.
I was anticipating a very hard battle if I did catch him, so when I saw
the red bike slide out I could hardly believe it – this made things a
lot easier for
me! After that I just enjoyed riding my bike; my Bridgestone tyres worked very
well until the end and my M1 felt very good. Now we have two days of testing and
we will try some new electronics in order to help me open the throttle earlier
and also, of
course, test some Bridgestone tyres"
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