Mission Motors has been out testing their Mission One race bike in the Easy Bay (looks like out by Bear Creek Canyon) with a little help from the California Highway Patrol, and has posted up a video of the electric racer on their site for all to enjoy.
You may remember the news that Norton was preparing an entry into this years Isle of Man TT. Visordown has caught up with the British team at Donington Park recently, and has posted a video of the Norton team testing the rotary motor powered NRV588, and running it on their dyno. The bike sounds vicious, and the glowing exhaust pipes, menacing. It won’t be long now until we can see the fruits of Norton’s labor. Watch the video after the jump.
Results are in from the MotoGP IRTA Test at Jerez this past weekend, and it was Casey Stoner who lead the entire weekend and came out the M Award winner. Despite this, Valentino Rossi and Jorge Lorenzo were closer than these times suggest. Jorge Lorenzo, in particular, made a big step forward, and looks like he could run with Rossi, Stoner and Pedrosa this season, though he is still not ready to challenge for the title. At least, that’s what he says. Unsurprisingly, the best times for most people were set during the BMW M Award session, but the lack of qualifying tires this year, combined with the fact that that 45 minute session was disrupted by both the weather and James Toseland’s crash meant that there was not so much in it.
The injury Dani Pedrosa suffered at Qatar is worse than at first thought. We reported earlier that Pedrosa had come away from the accident with only bruising and swelling, but after a closer examination it is now apparent that Dani has suffered a distal radius fracture, an injury which will require the fitting of a titanium screw to compress the fracture. He is scheduled to undergo surgery on Wednesday afternoon.
As the MotoGP Official Night Test came to a conclusion at midnight in Qatar on Tuesday, it was Casey Stoner who sat proudly at the head of the time sheet. This was the last day for the MotoGP field to get practice in the desert night before the season starts, and is the second of three tests planned for the 2009 season. The next outing for the MotoGP riders is the Official MotoGP Test at the Jerez circuit in southern Spain which takes place on 28th & 29th March. MotoGP will then return to Qatar for the first Grand Prix of the year on 10th-12th April.
After the torrential rain on Sunday evening, riders were not taking any chances with cool temperatures and a dirty track surface from high winds earlier last night. Without little surprise, lap times were well off record pace, and most riders were not taking any extra chances after seeing Chris Vermeulen, Dani Pedrosa and Mikka Kallio all crash out, and the track red flagged twice. Despite the carnage, Casey Stoner found himself on the top of the stack as the fastest rider of the day in the second round of testing at Qatar.
Testing was cut short for the first day at Qatar as a rare rainstorm put a hold to the first session under the lights of the MotoGP Official Night Test. At 6pm there were ambient temperatures of 68ºF and track temperatures of 75ºF, but an hour later heavy rain drove the riders off track and back into the shelter of their pit-boxes. Almost half the MotoGP field had not left their garages before the rain arrived, including Valentino Rossi, Casey Stoner, and Dani Pedrosa.
The Grand Prix Commission has announced a slew of new rules for MotoGP, supposedly aimed at cutting costs in MotoGP, and thus allowing the manufacturers and teams to compete despite the world’s economic situation.
The new measures include the following:
Marco Melandri has announced on his Facebook profile his intentions for the upcoming MotoGP season. According to the Italian press, Melandri wrote “for the moment, we will test the bike at Losail, we will see whether it’s going to be worth racing the bike after the test: if the bike’s a disaster, we will all go home.”
Furthermore, GPOne.com is reporting that the Italian will be riding an updated version of the 2008 bike at Qatar, which was tested at Valencia and Phillip Island earlier in the testing season. Melandri had previously rejected trying to race this bike, but as this point riding the quasi-2008 bike is better than no ride at all.
Whether this is just idle speculation or a genuine plan, we will see soon enough. The Qatar tests take place at the end of next week, and if Melandri is there on a Kawasaki, we will finally get an inkling of how this story will end.
The last day of testing at Phillip Island has ended with Ducati on top of the time board. After losing Troy Bayliss to retirement last year, Michel Fabrizio and Noriyuki Haga have stepped up to show that they are ready to defend the Ducati crown. Fabrizio ended the day the fastest, with a time of 1’32.19 it was well under Bayliss’ winning lap time from last year’s race. Team mate Haga was not far behind, just fractionally ahead of new boy Ben Spies. The American took a second off his time from yesterday, on only the second day of riding at the track.
.
The rest of the WSBK field has found their way to Phillip Island for their last testing before racing starts, and a new Max is the man to beat. This time, it was German Suzuki man Max Neukirchner who was the fastest, just dipping underneath the time set by Max Biaggi by .09 seconds. The day was an eventful one, marked by crashes, with Fabrizio, Haga, Checa, and Corser all hitting the dirt and tarmac. Ten Kate Honda’s Carlos Checa was by far the worst. After his off, Checa was taken to hospital for examination after it became apparent that the crash caused him to have memory loss. He was later released from hospital, but his participation in testing tomorrow is doubtful.