It's Miller Time!
An object lesson in braking, by Tom Sykes
It's hard, but at least John Hopkins is back on a bike
Thursday, May 31, 2012
Scott Jones Shoots Miller: Sunday Superbikes
Alonso leads title chase with eye on third crown | 2012 F1 season
Alonso leads title chase with eye on third crown is an original article from F1 Fanatic. If this article has been published anywhere other than F1 Fanatic it is an infringement of copyright.
In all the hand-wringing over whether there’s too much overtaking or too many race winners in F1 today, the fact that there’s a championship going on tends to get overlooked.
But there is, and the contest for the drivers’ title is being led by Fernando Alonso, thanks largely to his superb damage-limiting performances in the F2012 in the first four races of the year.
“We leave Monaco heading the championship,” said Alonso on Sunday. “If I’d been offered that after the Mugello test at the beginning of the month, I’d have signed for it there and then, but if I’d been told that after Melbourne, I would never have believed it!”
Ferrari have bounced back from a faltering start to the season. The F2012 is not the fastest car on the grid right now, but it is greatly improved.
For evidence of that, look back at how Alonso wrestled with the evil-handling car in qualifying in Australia, until it finally got away from him and skidded into the gravel. Even a driver of Alonso’s calibre could not have put that car on row three at Monaco.
The changes made following the Mugello test have transformed the F2012 from a car that scrapes into Q3 to one that can contend for podiums and even victories. From being 1.51% slower than the fastest cars in the first four races, that deficit has been almost halved, to 0.77%.
Compare that to the figures for their rivals over the season so far (see table, right) and it’s clear Ferrari are in contention now.
(Incidentally, one other team have enjoyed a leap forward comparable to that of Ferrari in the last two races: Williams, who were 1.35% off the pace in rounds one to four, and 0.73% down in Spain and Monaco.)
Alonso’s damage-limitation in the opening four races have clearly stood him in good stead: fending off Pastor Maldonado for fifth in Australia, and of course his superb win in the rain in Malaysia.
The car may not have served him well to begin with, but the team has other strengths. He has every reason to be satisfied with Ferrari’s race strategy and their reliably rapid pit stops, both of which have helped him gain places and points.
The other good news for Alonso is Felipe Massa’s long-overdue resurgence in form last weekend. If the improved Massa is here to stay, his role will undoubtedly be to take points off Alonso’s rivals, a luxury the McLaren and Red Bull drivers are unlikely to enjoy.
Too close to call
We’re just six races into a gruelling, 20-race calendar – less than a third of the way through the season – and at this stage several drivers are in the hunt for the title this year.
Alonso’s closest rivals at present are the Red Bull duo. Last year’s world champions became the first team to win two races this year in Monaco, and have built up a 38-point advantage in the constructors’ championship. Their tally of 146 is shared evenly between their two drivers.
Bucking the trend from 2011, Webber has tended to be ahead in qualifying. Vettel has generally recovered well in the races but lost points with an unnecessary tangle with Narain Karthikeyan in Malaysia, and a drive-through penalty in Spain.
McLaren have a car that performs well in qualifying – at least in Lewis Hamilton’s hands – but less well in the races. On top of that multiple mistakes in the pits has robbed them of more points.
Mercedes were quick to point out after Monaco that Nico Rosberg has out-scored every driver in the field over the last four races. Having failed to score in the last two races, he’s now up to fifth.
Fortunately for Rosberg, he’s largely avoided the unreliability problems that have compromised Michael Schumacher’s campaign thus far, as well as the first-lap tangles with Romain Grosjean.
Six drivers are close enough to Alonso to be able to leave the next race in Canada with the championship lead. This sixth is Kimi Raikkonen.
Lotus’s pace is clear to see from the table above, and Raikkonen’s back-to-back podium finishes in Bahrain and Spain. However he’s tended to be out-qualified by his junior team mate so far, and the team’s performance in Monaco was clearly short of what they’re capable of with the E20.
This year is shaping up to be a repeat of the thrilling 2010 season, with the lead of the championship repeatedly changing hands. The championship will be decided by who can make the most of the opportunity they have each race weekend.
But if there’s one driver who will be hoping this year doesn’t have too much in common with 2010, it’s Alonso, who lost the title in the final round that year.
That was the second time he’d missed out on a third world championship in the final round. Will this be the year Alonso finally joins the elite ranks of F1′s thrice-champions?
2012 F1 championship points
Use the interactive 2012 drivers’ and constructors’ championship points graphs:
2012 F1 season
- Alonso leads title chase with eye on third crown
- Become an F1 Fanatic Supporter: Annual subscriptions now available
- Why McLaren turned their nose up
- Williams capable of top five in Monaco, says Gillan
- Top ten pictures from the Monaco Grand Prix
Browse all 2012 F1 season articles
Image © Ferrari spa/Ercole Colombo
Alonso leads title chase with eye on third crown is an original article from F1 Fanatic. If this article has been published anywhere other than F1 Fanatic it is an infringement of copyright.
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/f1fanatic/~3/XoxV1rYE1Uo/
European regulars face strong home challenge at Japanese GP
Following last weekend's first ever Australian GP, the riders of the 2012 FIM Trial World Championship will now head to Japan for the third round of the series this coming weekend.The action will be played out over two days at Honda's famous Twin Ring Motegi racing complex, and with approximately one third of competitors waving the Japanese flag local fans will be hoping to see some solid home performances. Australia, Spain, Great Britain, France, Italy and Norway will also be represented in this weekend's starting line-up.Takahisa Fujinami - Repsol Montesa (fifth in current standings) has been Japan's lone rider in previous rounds of the series, but will be joined by no less than twenty other Japanese competitors this weekend. Joining Fujinami in the World Pro class will be home crowd favourites, Kenichi Kuroyama - Yamaha, Fuitaka Nozaki - Yamaha, Tomoyuki Ogawa - Honda, Tsuyoshi Ogawa - Beta, Akira Shibata - Honda and Akio Saito - Honda. The remaining Japanese riders will compete in the Junior, Youth and Open International divisions.Whilst Fujinami and his compatriots aim for success at their home GP, Spanish World Pro heavyweight Toni Bou - Repsol Montesa will once again be looking to extend his championship lead. Fellow Spanish rider, Adam Raga - Gas Gas, who beat Bou on day one of the French opening round and is second in current standings, will be determined to again put Bou under pressure. Raga will also aim to create some distance between himself and his other Spanish rivals Jeroni Fajardo - Beta and Albert Cabestany - Sherco who lag just three and five pointsbehind Raga, in third and fourth place respectively.Also lining up for battle in the World Pro class in Japan this weekend will be Europe's finest. Representing Great Britain's James Dabill - Beta, Jack Challoner - Beta, Alexz Wigg - Gas Gas and Michael Brown - Gas Gas who will be joined by Daniel Oliveras - Ossa and Pere Borrellas - Gas Gas from Spain, Italian Matteo Grattarola - Gas Gas and Loris Gubian - Gas Gas from France.In the Junior division, Alexandre Ferrer - Sherco from France, who already has an impressive twenty-one point lead over his second-placed Spanish rival Francesc Moret - Montesa, will aim to continue his winning ways after clinching four consecutive victories in France and Australia.Spaniard Pol Tarres - JTG, who is third in the current standings, will be hoping to improve on his latest performance in Australia that saw him finish in disappointing sixth place on day two. Benoit Dagnicourt - Beta will be full of confidence after scoring his first podium position of the series in the Australian GP, whilst Jack Sheppard - Beta will hope to follow suit by gaining his first podium placing in Japan.French rider Steven Coquelin - Gas Gas, Bradley Cox - Beta from Great Britain, Norway's Sverre Lundevold - Beta and Oriol Noguera – Sherco from Spain will be among the regular protagonists competing alongside Japanese newcomers in the Youth class this weekend.
25 Years of World Superbike: Roger Burnett
Recently inducted into the SBK Hall of Fame Roger Burnett was the first rider ever to score a pole position, at the opening round at his home circuit of Donington way back in 1988. He has, as rider, team consultant, rider manager and PR guru been part of SBK history almost every step of the way. With the memories of an epic Donington SBK weekend in 2012 permanently etched in the mind of all who were there to see it unfold, what better time to get the thoughts of an ‘old-time’ British ex-rider who still takes a keen interest in the modern day SBK paddock.
Q: How was the championship in the early years? Did you know it was going to be such a success?
A: I think there was a real excitement that global four-stroke racing was going to be on proper GP short circuits. Prior to SBK starting four-stroke racing was all about TT-F1, which took into consideration road tracks. So what we all got excited about was that and the fact that that it was going to be a full World championship of 12 rounds, with two races per event. That formula, back 25 years ago, was ahead of its day. Now MotoGP has had to go four-stroke so SBK was ahead. The formula of two races gives a fantastic day of entertainment, whether for the TV viewer of live spectator. Add in that the whole formula was production based, and therefore could be a real shop window or the manufacturers. That made it a brilliant, exciting, concept.
Q: How strong was the bond between racing and production machines?
A: The manufacturers joined in, with the first year of the Honda RC30 in 1988 a production-based model that we raced, then the Yamaha OW01 was in its infancy, so the manufacturers had models to promote and display – and hone into becoming better roadgoing products. I always understood in my racing career that I was privileged to be able to race bikes and the only reason I could do that I that people bought them for the road. So to be involved in the concept and initiation in a world championship that gave the roadbike audience something back was exciting and a real privilege. I absolutely love the Superbike World Championship and I love the people. There are people in there who have been there for 25 years. Racing is competition and with competition there can be a little bit of bitchiness from time-to-time, but generally speaking the camaraderie in the paddock and the atmosphere is so much better than the MotoGP paddock.
Q: Do you have any strong memories of those first races?
A: What was really surprising that Ducati wheeled out this bloody great big red thing in the first rounds; so noisy you could not believe it. Then Marco Lucchinelli jumps on it – and he was a god really. I do not know how old he is but in 1988 he was already pushing a decent age and he was a seasoned kind of racer. That Ducati was so good and it came from nowhere. Nobody anticipated that Ducati would have such a strong product for that championship from year one. And what has been proven is that they have had a strong, competitive product for the whole 25 years, which has been unbelievable.
Q: You did a lot of travelling in the early years, lots of fly-away rounds, so it must have been difficult to do all that even without the huge numbers of people in a modern-day SBK team?
A: We used to do a lot of it ourselves. Steve Parrish and I were always mates and when we did the back-to-back Canadian and American rounds we kind of shared travel together – because Steve was always good at organising and so on. We would freight the bikes over there, fly in from Europe, collect our bikes from the freight depot in a Ryder hire-truck, put our kit bikes into it at the other end – we did it ourselves with a forklift – and then drove to the first race. After that round we would re-pack the crate and drive down to America to the next round! In those days, across two teams, we had ten people – including the riders!
Source: http://www.zimbio.com/MotoGP/articles/Z5KBDlC_XRZ/25+Years+World+Superbike+Roger+Burnett
Wednesday, May 30, 2012
IOMTT: McGuinness Sends a Message at First Practice Night
Monday night marked the first practice session for the returning riders to the Isle of Man TT, and John McGuinness got things started off on the right foot. While most riders at the TT spent the evening shaking off the cobwebs, sorting out new bikes, and generally getting a feel for thing, the 17-time Isle of Man TT race winner McGuinness went out onto the Mountain Course, dropped a 128.267 mph lap on his third ...
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/AsphaltandRubber/~3/JaydWByjsY8/
Trackside Tuesday: Soft-Spoken, But Not Broken
Ian Hutchinson has experienced the extreme highs and lows of racing, from taking the first clean sweep of all five solo class wins at the 2010 Isle of Man TT, to nearly losing his leg in a first lap accident in a British Supersport race at Silverstone later that same season. After sitting out of the 2011 event, “Hutchy” is back at the TT on the esteemed Swan Yamaha team’s Isle of Man debut entry. ...
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/AsphaltandRubber/~3/8vQUD4tUgeI/
2001 748 oil leak
At over 43K miles...this is the first oil leak I've had to deal with on this bike.
First picture shows a the leak amount after a few minutes parked at the conclusion of the ride, this would grow in size slightly as the minutes ticked on. From looking at the 4th picture...I think I should have trained the camera up higher on the motor?
First picture shows a the leak amount after a few minutes parked at the conclusion of the ride, this would grow in size slightly as the minutes ticked on. From looking at the 4th picture...I think I should have trained the camera up higher on the motor?
Source: http://www.esportbike.com/forums/showthread.php?t=144759&goto=newpost
2012 Miller Motorsports Park World Superbikes Race Two: A Game Of Two Halves
Race Two was stopped after three complete laps and restarted after a crash that left fluids on the track.
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