Nicky Hayden very close to victory until the last instants in Qatar
Repsol Honda Team riders keep their high level in Losail, with Hayden 2nd and Pedrosa 6th. Repsol Honda Team keeps the leadership in the teams’ standings
Different luck for the riders of the Repsol Honda Team this morning in Qatar. Today’s race has been almost perfect for Nicky Hayden, only the victory was missing to round up an excellent performance, finishing second. Team mate Dani Pedrosa, who took his first MotoGP podium two weeks ago in Jerez, finishing second in front of his home crowd, had expected much more of this race but a very bad start due to a problem with the clutch and later the oil stains caused by the engine oil of Hopkin’s Suzuki, conditioned any option of the Repsol Honda Team rider to escape with the leading group in the first laps.
The race started with a surprising Casey Stoner leading the pack and setting a high pace that marked the differences between the leading group and the rest. The Australian rider was followed by Repsol rider Nicky Hayden and the rest of the group made-up by Capirossi, Rossi and Gibernau. Meanwhile, Dani’s bad start conditioned the rest of his race performance after falling back to eleventh in the first lap. Hayden was overtaken by Rossi on lap six and then both passed Stoner on lap 10 and 12. respectively. From that moment on, the leader and his follower opened a gap to the rest of the pack, getting ready for the final duel for the victory. Hayden made a try four laps before the end of the race and overtook Rossi, but he passed him back, a few corners later and that was the end of the fight. Rossi crossed the finish line first, followed by Hayden, second. Team mate Dani Pedrosa, after passing Elias, Nakano and finally a combative Melandri, took the chequered flag in sixth position.
With this result, both Repsol Honda Team riders take the leading positions in the overall standings, with Hayden second, five points behind Capirossi and Pedrosa third, eleventh points behind. In the teams’ standings, the Repsol Honda Team keeps the lead, with an advantage of 12 points over second classified Ducati Marlboro Team.
In the 250cc, after the positive start of Sebastián Porto at the Losail Circuit, setting the fourth fastest time on Thursday, everybody was expecting to see a good race result on Saturday, but the Argentinean rider finally finished seventh. Porto was at the end of the leading group – ninth – after the race start but fell back to eleventh. On the last laps, and on worn tyres, the Argentinean began to feel better on his bike allowing him to climb up several positions, crossing the finish line seventh. Team mate Shuhei Aoyama, who started from the sixteenth position on the grid climbed up to fifteenth after the first lap, and finally finished thirteenth, thus scoring his first points of the 2006 season.
In the 125cc, Bradley had a bad start, loosing several positions, dropping back to thirtieth after the first lap. He quickly started to recover positions, climbing up to nineteenth. Smith seemed to be performing an impressive recovery that would have taken him to the scoring area, but in lap nine, the young British rider went off track in a fast area and he almost crashed. He recovered from the incident, but had dropped back to the twenty-seventh place. On the following laps he managed to move up finally crossing the finish line on 22nd position.
Rider´s comments
Nicky Hayden:
‘Battling for the win is so much more fun than battling for fourth place! I pushed Valentino hard today and I pushed myself about as hard as I could too. We had the bike that could win today, but on the last lap in a left-hander I got into a nice little slide and Valentino gapped me pretty good and it was hard to recover. We made a few changes overnight and this morning the track was so different. We gambled a bit with set up today, we rolled the dice, and it worked well for me in the race – helping a lot in the fast corners. So a big thanks to my crew. It’s my second year with my crew chief and we’re working really well together. All the guys have been working really hard and making some good improvements on the bike. We’ve still got some work to do and we’ll be back here in the morning testing, but the new bike’s definitely getting better and we’re heading in the right direction. Six podiums on the trot is cool, but it would be nice to get a few wins along the way!’
Dani Pedrosa:
‘It’s easy to say this now, but I believe I could have finished further up, at least in 4th, if I’d made a better start. We had the a problem with the clutch, like Nicky when he was practising his starts yesterday. At first I thought the wheel was spinning but actually it was the clutch. Then, when I was behind Elias and we were both overtaking Hopkins his bike put oil on our visors. Elias closed the throttle and we lost a lot of time on the leaders – at least 3 or 4 seconds. When I caught Melandri we had a big battle. My bike was really fast and I could overtake him, but he was braking so late! I’m not angry, but I’m upset because today I lost a good opportunity to be battling at the front. In the race I learned a lot of things and I know I performed as well as I could have. Although I’m frustrated today, the two races so far have been really positive.’
Sebastián Porto:
‘Well, that it hasn’t been that bad. I’m happy, especially with the race, obviously not with the result. You’re here to win, but given all the problems we’ve had and our current situation, finishing today has been very important to me, on a personal level. But there’s still a lot to be improved. We have to further improve the chassis, and the engine didn’t work well today either. I’ve given my best with what I had. The best was the last part of the race. I was fourth in the group and I managed to overtake them all; finishing seventh isn’t bad. Let’s hope that this will be the beginning of an improvement and that the next race will be even better. We haven’t managed to have a good feeling on the bike with the new tyres yet. We loose a lot on new tyres, but then, halfway the race, it is the other way around. When the others start going down, this bike keeps the pace. That’s something I still have to improve, the initial part on new tyres, I need better grip. Now it’s time to enjoy and relax; I’m already looking forward to preparing the next race.’
Shuhei Aoyama:
‘I’m obviously not happy at all, it’s a bad result. The bike worked quite well; we could have improved a bit the suspensions, but the overall setting was OK. But the rider hasn’t been at a good level today. I don’t know why, but I haven’t been able to be fast on this circuit at any time. I probably haven’t been focussed enough this weekend. I made a good start but several riders overtook me in the first corner. After the crash in Jerez I wanted above all to finish the race here, but I wanted to do it much more in the front.’
Bradley Smith:
‘The start was OK. It wasn’t great but it wasn’t bad. I only lost a couple of places but the first corner was awful. I just got in there; I guess I was thinking too much, being really cautious. I looked at all the riders and it made me so nervous. I just need to get the blockage out of my head and be clear and go right into the corner. There were people around me that moved up to sixteenth on the first lap and I was back in thirtieth. It is possible, I just need to be able to do it. The race was good, I made it up to nineteenth, the eighteenth was just in front and then I could see seventeenth and sixteenth in the distance, a few seconds ahead so I kept on pushing. Then I went wide in turn thirteen. I brought the bike back onto the track but pushed too much into the next corner. The bike got a bit squirrelly and the I had to go straight. I lost so much time and places. After that I just kept on putting my head down making sure I was putting in consistent laps to try to catch the riders in front. Now I’m just thinking what could have been but we’re going to sort everything out for Turkey.’
