Jerez Race- results and riders talk

Rossi takes first win of the year

from:motogp.com

A crowd of more than 120,000 fans at the Jerez de la Frontera circuit witnessed a victory for Valentino Rossi in the first European race of 2009.

Valentino Rossi took his first win of the season at the Gran Premio bwin.com de España on Sunday, beating Dani Pedrosa to the line by a 2.7s margin in front of a huge Spanish crowd in Andalusia.

Pedrosa led for the first half of the race having made one of his trademark strong starts from second on the grid, but Rossi took the lead with ten laps to go and did not look back there and his triumph gives him an 11 point lead in the general standings.

The rostrum was completed by Casey Stoner, who trailed Rossi by 10 seconds, the Ducati Marlboro rider moving into second place in the championship. It was the Australian’s first podium appearance at the southern Spanish track.

As was the case in the 250cc and 125cc races the Spanish rider who got underway in pole position crashed out when Fiat Yamaha’s Jorge Lorenzo lost control riding in fourth place with three laps to go, losing ground in the championship race.

An excellent performance from Randy de Puniet, meanwhile, saw the Frenchman bring his LCR Honda satellite machine home in fourth place, having qualified in fifth, to give himself a confidence boost ahead of his home GP in two weeks time at Le Mans.

Another excellent run from Marco Melandri gave the Italian another good points haul in fifth, the former Ducati and Honda rider improving on his good result from last weekend in Japan for the Kawasaki-equipped Hayate Racing team.

Rizla Suzuki’s Loris Capirossi rode steadily from sixth on the grid, to come home in the same position, meaning five different manufacturers were represented in the top six.

Monster Tech Yamaha’s Colin Edwards crossed the line seventh, whilst Andrea Dovizioso did well to finish eighth in his third ride for the factory Repsol Honda team having left the track at one stage. Toni Elías was the second best Spaniard in ninth for the San Carlo Honda Gresini team, with the top ten completed by Suzuki’s Chris Vermeulen.

Sete Gibernau on his return to Jerez could only manage 11th for the Grupo Francisco Hernando team, whilst 2006 World Champion Nicky Hayden crossed the line 15th.

1 V Rossi (It) Yamaha 45 mins 18.557 secs
“This is a wonderful victory because yesterday we were really quite worried! I couldn’t ride how I wanted to and it was very hard. We had to work all together to understand how to fix the problem and finally we made a big change to try to make the bike feel how I like in the corner, which worked, so I have to say a huge thank you to Jeremy and all my guys. This morning we could tell immediately that things were much better and then we made a couple more small changes after warm-up, which made my M1 and my Bridgestone tyres feel even better. The race was long and quite hard – I lost some time getting past Lorenzo at the start and then I had a good battle with Stoner, which I enjoyed. After that I wasn’t so fast and I couldn’t close the gap to Pedrosa for a while; he was very quick but finally things improved and I was able to catch and pass him. It’s great to win again and especially here in Jerez, which I love. It’s ten years since I made the joke with the toilet here and so I thought it would be funny to do it again if I won – I liked that a lot! Now I hope that the changes we’ve made here will help us for the rest of the season. Thanks again to everyone!”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/motorsport/motorbikes/8031661.stm


2 D Pedrosa (Spn) Honda 45:21.257

"I really wanted to win, but I knew it would be very difficult because Valentino was already very fast on Friday. So I just tried to do my race and see what the result was at the end," he said.

"Coming from all those problems we had [over the winter], it's still unbelievable for me to be on the podium. My race was very good and I'm happy."

Pedrosa believes that Rossi's victory was no surprise, despite the Italian qualifying his Yamaha on the second row.

"Maybe he was going slowly to try and not make other people see how fast he was," added Pedrosa, who moved up from fifth to equal third in the world championship as a result of his podium finish - 24 points behind Rossi. (http://www.autosport.com)

3 C Stoner (Aus) Ducati 45:29.064
"After all these years this is my first time on the podium at Jerez so it has been a long time coming – I've had plenty of opportunities in the past but I've been unlucky and made mistakes, so this tastes really sweet. Today I wasn't nervous about the race at all because to be honest I went into it thinking that I didn't have a chance of finishing on the podium. We knew Dani, Valentino and Jorge all had a better pace than us so we took a bit of a gamble with the setting to try and find an extra edge and it paid off, so I have to thank the team for that”, he said. “I got a great start and I was running right up there with Dani in the early stages but I started to lose the front in a few corners. When Valentino came I tried to hold him off as best as I could but when he came past me the second time I decided to try and stay behind him, to see if he could take me with him to Dani. Unfortunately from that point I was losing the front even more often and there was one place in particular where I was almost crashing every lap. When Jorge started to close in I honestly thought it was ‘game over' but I kept pushing to try and at least take the battle to the final laps.It was just getting to the point where I was going to have to back off because I was risking a crash, but Jorge solved that problem for me! I couldn't believe my luck but I think we deserved it though because the whole team has worked incredibly hard all weekend and I could not have given more in the race. It is only third place but it feels even better than the win in Qatar." (http://www.moto-live.com/)
4 R de Puniet (Fr) Honda 45:50.450
“It was a perfect weekend for me and the team, so my thanks to them. When I enjoy the bike I can really go fast, and people could see that today,” said de Puniet.

“The bike was very easy to ride and I had fun. I made a good start and when Dovizioso overtook me I remained concentrated to try and keep my position. After a few laps he made a mistake and I got back into fifth place. Then at the end I finished in fourth place.

“Honestly, I think if we can keep this pace for the rest of the season we can be really competitive. However, we must keep our feet on the ground because we restart from zero at Le Mans. My goal is to finish all the races and get as many points as possible.”(crash.net)


I noticed 2 playboy bunnies in the garage, My theory is that the team promised randy 2 bunnies for every race he finishes in a good position, , but what ever they are doing it seas to be working,
5 M Melandri (Ita) Kawasaki 45:51.685
“It's been such a nice race for us,” Melandri told the official MotoGP website. “We were not as good during practice, but we were working hard for the race, we changed the bike set-up a bit and the feeling was pretty good. It was very tough for everyone because the grip on the side was not so good.

“It was nice fighting with Colin [Edwards] and Loris [Capirossi], clean overtaking and a lot of fun. We tried to catch de Puniet but he didn't make a mistake.” (crsh.net)
6 L Capirossi (Ita) Suzuki 45:52.685
“I am a bit upset with the result, because we had a problem with the tyre and had to change it on the grid and that cost us some places at the start,” revealed Capirossi. “We put in a new one and for the first two laps it did not work as well as I would have liked.

“After it settled down I pushed hard and chased Marco [Melandri] and Colin [Edwards] and tried get past them. I did that but the grip dropped off pretty quickly and they went back past me, so I played about with the traction control to find the best solution.

“On the last lap I overtook Colin again, but there wasn't enough time to get Marco. We want to go much better than this, but we have to work harder, because although the bike is not too bad we have to take some big steps."

"I got a reasonable start off the line, but I came together with a couple of other riders in turn one and lost my momentum,” said Vermeulen. “It was a bit difficult as I had a couple of Ducatis around me and with their straight-line speed they were a bit hard to get past.

“Once I got by I thought I would be able to pick up my lap-time, but we struggled with front grip and I wasn't able to. The track temperature was a few degrees hotter today and it seemed to affect us more than it did some others and we have to work out why.”(http://www.crash.net/)
7 C Edwards (US) Yamaha 45:52.978
"I got a really good start but right from the first lap I knew I wasn't going to be able to run the pace I needed. The guys in front just gapped me immediately and I couldn't get the bike to turn. We went in the wrong direction yesterday when it was hot, so for the race we went back to the setting I'd had in the morning when the track temperature was a bit cooler. In the cooler temperatures that setting was fine, but once the temperature goes up I just couldn't get into the rhythm I want and know I was capable of. I wanted to be smooth and precise but I couldn't do that. I was having to adjust my style to get some weight on the rear to help the bike turn, but it wasn't enough for me to get into the top six and that's a bit frustrating." (yamaha-network.com )
8 A Dovizioso (Ita) Honda 45:53.182
“I didn't make a great start but I was able to recover some places and I'm pretty sure I could have stayed with Lorenzo if I hadn't made the mistake. On the eighth lap while I was in fifth position, I lost the rear entering turn eight and I almost crashed. Fortunately I was able to rejoin the race and started to climb back up from 16th to eighth position”, he explained. “I wasn't as fast as I wanted today because we're still not at 100 per cent with the set-up of the bike. I'm disappointed about today's result because we didn't get the best out of the bike today. Dani had a great race today and I think he's getting the maximum possible from the package, so I want to say congratulations to him." (http://www.moto-live.com)
9 T Elias (Spn) Honda 46:01.246

“I honestly thought we were capable of a better race but it was impossible,” Elías said afterwards. “We were suffering too much throughout the race with a lack of rear grip and I can promise the fans that I couldn’t do any more than I did.”

He continued, “In a situation like this you can only try to take some positives away from the Grand Prix as a whole and looking back at the weekend we have at least continued to make progress. We were two seconds off the pace in Qatar, one and a half seconds off in Motegi and one second off here. The target for Le Mans is to reduce it to less than a second.”(motogp.com)

10 C Vermeulen (Aus) Suzuki 46:03.740
Vermeulen was already looking forward to the next round at Le Mans as the place to put things right. After a good winter for Vermeulen and Capirossi to be sitting ninth and tenth in the standings after three races is undeniably below expectations, but the Aussie star is relishing the prospect of returning to France, where he took victory in 2007.

“It’s a place I have won at, I was fifth there last year and we have always been quick there,” Vermeulen remarked. “It’s a track which I really enjoy riding at, so hopefully we can go for another victory.”(motogp.com)

11 S Gibernau (Spn) Ducati 46:06.749

“It was exciting and I’m very happy,” an upbeat Gibernau stated afterwards. “We finished the race and we improved a lot. It’s just fantastic to race at Jerez, it is something very special and the team did a great job and I enjoyed every minute of it. I think we are making progress and we are having fun. Every time we race we get a little bit better.”

Cheered on by 260,000 fans over the duration of the weekend and racing in front of 120,000 spectators on Sunday itself, Gibernau was moved by unique atmosphere, commenting, “If I could go out there to individually thank every fan that comes out to cheer us I would do so, because it’s unbelievable and I’m very, very happy. Now I just can’t wait to go back home, train harder, start to push more and go to France and look for more.”(motogp.com)

12 Y Takahashi (Jpn) Honda 46:10.432
13 J Toseland (GB) Yamaha 46:12.240
"It has been a tough weekend and we have got some issues to sort out. We're still trying a few things on the bike and I'm still searching for a comfortable setting over a race distance. I still need a second or so on race pace but I need to sort out qualifying too. I can do the same times as four or five guys in front of me, but when you're all lapping at the same pace, it's hard to come through. I'm giving myself too much to do from qualifying and being too far back. You don't need to be too far off but if you start at the back you stay at the back in a competitive class like this. It has not been a great start to the season but I don't feel we're that far away. We've got a lot of information from this weekend and we're eliminating things that we know don't work. I'm confident we're close to finding the setting I need and working hard with my guys to find it."
(yamaha-network.com )
14 A de Angelis (SMR) Honda 46:12.498
“I woke up this morning with a bout of flu and I was really struggling. Doctor Costa sorted me out with some medication but I certainly wasn’t at 100% for the race. I got a decent start but I got stuck behind Toseland and even though I felt much faster than him he was very, very strong on the brakes and I just couldn’t get past. I got stuck there for the whole race and that was that, pretty much! There’s not much else to say! It has been one of my hardest weekends for a long time and I’m looking forward to spending some time at home, recovering from this illness and having a good rest before France, which promises to be another tough one for us.”(http://www.paddocktalk.com)
15 N Hayden (US) Ducati 46:19.794
“I was nervous that physically it would be a tough race but it turned out to be a lot worse than we expected”, he admitted. “In the beginning I struggled a lot again with a full fuel load and I made a mistake on the first lap – I was trying to make some positions up and I actually lost some. I tried to recover but something was wrong with the set-up of the bike. I can't make the harder compound work well with my bike and I have to go with the softer one but today even those didn't start to work well until I got a lot of heat into them. I did my best time on the seventeenth lap so there is something we have definitely to work on with the team. We need to look at the data and think up something different for the next one.” (http://www.moto-live.com)



Jorge Lorenzo - Position: DNF
"I am very sad, because I was so fast all weekend and on pole position. Unfortunately today the temperature meant that our setting did not work in the same way and at the moment we don't understand why. This is really more disappointing than the actual crash. Fourth position wouldn't have been so bad but when you're in front of your fans, at home with so much adrenalin on the bike of course you try to do the maximum. I could see that the podium was possible and maybe the right thing would have been to go more gently and not push so hard in that moment, but I always want to do my best. Then I made a mistake and I threw all my good work away. We have to try to forget this and wake up feeling positive tomorrow because Le Mans is near. I'm sorry to all the fans who came to see me, to my team, family and to everybody!"