Repsol Honda fans were delighted to hear that Dani Pedrosa would return to MotoGP racing for the Australian GP at Phillip Island this weekend, but the good news was short-lived, as today the Spanish rider has decided not to race on Sunday. Participating in both Saturday sessions, Pedrosa could only muster a 15th place position for the MotoGP race grid, battling with the pain from his broken collarbone.
Realizing that his return to racing since his injury two weeks ago at Motegi was too much too soon, Pedrosa has obviously been battling too fresh of an injury, and was unable to meaningfully compete at the GP level. Accordingly the Repsol Honda squad has announced the mutual decision that Pedrosa will not race at Phillip Island, and instead pegs the Spaniard’s return to occur at Estoril for the Portuguese GP in two weeks.
Back when men were men, and GP racing’s crowning event was contested on two-stroke 500cc machines, Wayne Gardner found himself carrying the factory Honda GP team on his NSR 500. This fantastic 1986 documentary, Lone Racer, follows Gardner one year before he won the 500GP Championship, and became the first Australian to win GP racing’s premiere racing class.
The film includes great behind the scenes footage of the Aussie, his fiancée, and his team. So grab a cold beverage, put your feet up, and get ready to spend the rest of your Saturday afternoon watching the 30 minutes of video in this three part series. Videos after the jump.
With the 2010 World Superbike Championship series getting underway in only one week’s time, WSBK riders are getting their last days of testing in at Phillip Island before the season opener next Sunday. If this weekend’s testing is any idication of what we can expect from next weekend while under race and qualifying conditions, then Michel Fabrizio looks like the man to beat. The Italian lead the testing sessions on his Xerox Ducati with a lap time of 1?31.650. Continue on for footage of the testing session by SuperbikeTV, and testing session times from Australia.
UPDATE: Andrew Pitt has confirmed that he has signed with Reitwagen Racing for the 2010 WSBK season.
After BMW added a satellite team to World Superbike, the German team, Reitwagen Racing, was expected to have Austrian Roland Resch at the helm of one of the team’s S1000RR bikes, with a second bike rumored to be still open.
A week later, Mat Mladin shook things up in WSBK, after he tweeted that he was contemplating an offer to ride in the World Superbike Championship. After this news, links began to be made between Mladin and Reitwagen Racing program.
Any hopes of the Australian AMA champion riding the Bavarian machine though seem to be dashed now though, as fellow Australian Andrew Pitt is expected to take up the second seat on the satellite squad instead of Mladin.