The 2004 World Championship resumes activity this weekend in the Czech republic.
Repsol riders face the second half of the season with optimism, with seven races ahead.
After the three-weeks break of the Motorcycling World Championship, riders, teams and journalists have taken up activity again this weekend on the emblematic Czech circuit of Brno, venue of the tenth Grand Prix of the 2004 season. After nine races, Alex Barros is fifth in the overall standings and his teammate Nicky Hayden sixth. With seven races yet to be staged and 175 points at stake, the gap of 81 points between the North American rider of the Repsol Honda Team and the leader of the overall standings, Valentino Rossi, allows Hayden to keep on dreaming about a place on the overall rostrum. In his second season in the MotoGP World Championship and after becoming Rookie of the Year in his class last year, Hayden has one pole position, two front row starts and two podium finishes in his record so far. His teammate Alex Barros has not been as lucky in the first half of the season as Hayden. His single podium in Germany, despite fighting for victory until the very last corner, his crashes and the results far away from his hopes, will probably be an additional incentive for the 33-year-old Brazilian rider. After the three-weeks break, Barros returns to competition with the will to improve positions in the overall standings and to go for podiums and victories.
The third Repsol rider in the MotoGP class, rookie Rubén Xaus, arrives in a circuit almost unknown for him – he raced one race of the Thunderbike Championship in 1996 here -, so once again it will be a weekend of constant learning. Eleventh in the overall standings, only ten points behind the tenth, Japanese rider Tamada, Xaus will keep as his main aim to continue learning and scoring as many points as possible along the rest of the season.
In the 250 cc class, Sebastián Porto has still real options to get the title, despite the 52-points gap with regard to the class rookie and leader of the overall standings, Honda rider Dani Pedrosa. His two second-place finishes in Germany and England allowed him to shorten the gap to the second rider of the standings, Frenchman Randy De Puniet, who is now only 18 points ahead of Porto. With 175 points at stake and circuits that favour the Argentinean Repsol rider and his Aprilia, the title is still the final target of Sebastián Porto this season. His teammate Fonsi Nieto, with more problems than expected, will try to move forward in this second half of the season and be back in the fight for the podium and the victory in the remaining races.
In the 125 cc class Pablo Nieto is fifth in the overall standings, 75 points behind the leading rider, Italian Andrea Dovizioso, who is firmly moving towards his first World Championship title. The youngest of the Nieto clan, after his disappointing crash during the first lap in England, will try to make up for the bad result and shine again on a track where he crashed last year while being third. His teammate Sergio Gadea, already knows what it means to score, finished sixteenth in the past British Grand Prix, and will try to score more points on the demanding Czech track, which is completely unknown for Jorge Martínez Aspars’ pupil.
