Tyres are crucial for winning in MotoGP

Pic SportsPics.co.za
By Gwenyth King, SportsPics
April 18 2004

Tyres may well play a big part at Phakisa. Kenny Roberts (Suzuki) has two types of race tyre, “...one is pretty critical whether it will go race distance and one that we know will go the distance, but will need a better bike setting.” Roberts finished a close fifth in the first qualifying session.

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John Hopkins, Suzuki Grand Prix Team - photo by www.SportsPics.co.za

Roberts and his brand new GSV-R have given hope of a Suzuki revival. Team-mate John Hopkins ran both his bikes in Friday’s qualifying session, and reported that his best time came on race tyres. “I’ll give it a full go tomorrow,” he promised.

Max Biaggi, Camel Honda Team - photo by www.SportsPics.co.za

Top speed so far, in both free practice and in qualifying on Friday, was 269km/hour and 267.4km/hour respectively - both by Max Biaggi. Practice speeds were faster, but all riders put in better times during the afternoon’s qualifying session. Ground temperature in the morning at Phakisa was 26°C and rose in the afternoon to 32°C, which could partly account for improved times.

All the jostling for grid position during Saturday’s final qualifying session, in the end, came to nothing as Rossi cut into everybody’s time and took pole position back with two minutes to go, in a time of 1:32.647.

In accordance with the new rules, there will be three riders per row, stringing out the field and reducing the chances of a pile up at the first corner.

Final grid reads Rossi, Gibernau, Biaggi on the front row, with Nicky Hayden, Colin Edwards and Shin’ya Nakano on second row. Still posing a threat on the third row are Marco Melandri, Alex Barros and Loris Capirossi.