Repsol Honda Team 2004 presentation in Barcelona.
Alex Barros and Nicky Hayden optimistic and confident to be fighting for the MotoGP championship title.
The Repsol Honda Team 2004 made its presentation today in Barcelona, on the day before their participation in the IRTA tests, which will be held this weekend at the Catalunya circuit. Alex Barros, Nicky Hayden and all team members of the MotoGP class were joined this time by the members of the Repsol Montesa Honda Trial team, Takehisha Fujinami, Marc Freixa, Doug Lampkin and Laia Sanz.
The presentation, held at the Reales Atarazanas in the Barcelona city centre, has been once again the starting point of a season that will be more open and competitive than ever. Alex Barros and Nicky Haydens aim is to clinch the third consecutive world championship title in the MotoGP class for the team. Todays presentation served also to remember and celebrate the 10th anniversary of the partnership between Repsol and Honda who has achieved the best ever career results of a team in the world championship history with 8 titles, 75 victories, 165 podium finishes and 71 pole positions. These results were achieved with exceptional protagonists: Mick Doohan, Alex Crivillé, Sinichi Itoh, Tadayuki Okada, Takuma Aoki, Sete Gibernau, Tohru Ukawa, Valentino Rossi and Nicky Hayden. Their victories were remembered with spectacular images. Barros and Hayden showed themselves very excited after the work done in winter, which has given satisfactory results. This weekend, all teams and title candidate riders will meet during the tests, and it will a good chance to see everyones shape.
With twenty-two days left before the next meeting in Welkom for the South African GP, everybody agrees with the fact that it will be an open, spectacular and unpredictable world championship. ‘It will be a very open championship – said Alex Barros with no doubt very interesting because there are several riders with options. Im sure that it will be exciting and that well be there. I arrive at the first race completely recovered from the injury that caused me several problems last year, and Ive adapted very well to the new bike during the winter tests’.
Nicky Hayden, in his second year in the team, shares the opinion of his team-mate, highlighting how much easier things are knowing the championship, the circuits and the rivals: ‘Im going to feel much more comfortable because I know the circuits and I have more experience on the bike. This will allow me to ride more confident and although I know that I have a long way ahead Im eager to compare our performance with that of the other riders’.
The presentation concluded with the words of Mr. Koji Nakajima, Manager of Honda Racing Corporation and Mr. Antonio Gomis, Corporate Manager of External Relations at Repsol YPF. They both have highlighted the success achieved by the team in ten years of history. We are still looking for the same – said Mr. Nakajima and we have not stopped progressing thanks to both companies efforts. We want this year to be a year filled with success’.
Mr. Antonio Gomis, as did the team riders, declared that this years championship, although exciting, will be harder than in the previous years: ‘It wont be an easy season. It has never been, but we have confidence in Nicky Hayden and Alex Barros to keep the level of a winning team, thanks to the compromise and effort always kept by Repsol and HRC’.
