MotoGP 2004 - Valencia Test

2004 Repsol Honda team mates Nicky Hayden and Alex Barros finished their scheduled two-day test at Valencia this afternoon (Sunday) pleased with their work and the way the teams testing schedule is developing.

In bright sunshine today they worked at the 4.005km Ricardo Tormo circuit putting more km’s on their factory Honda RC211V’s in readiness for the start of the 16-round 2004 MotoGP world championship that starts at Welkom in South Africa in exactly six weeks time.

Hayden and Barros will shortly fly back to America and Brazil respectively before returning to Spain (Barcelona) for the official launch of the Repsol Honda Team on March 25th and the IRTA tests the following weekend.

Nicky Hayden- “A good couple of days. I’ve gone faster here than I ever have before which is good. The teams working real well and I’m looking forward to the IRTA tests at the end of the month when the season will really start to build. In Barcelona they’ll be all the teams, great atmosphere, a little bit of hype. We then have one more test at Jerez then the fun starts with the first race. I’m really excited.”

Saturday best lap 1m33.7 70 laps
Sunday best lap 1m33.3 91 laps

Alex Barros - “Today we tested a lot of different solutions on the bike for this circuit and am very happy with the results over the weekend. I can now make consistently fast laps and I don’t seem to be too bothered by the shoulder with seems to be coming better with every test we do. We are still not at 100% but I’m pleased we are on the schedule we set ourselves when we started testing this year. That is to take it steady with the bike and the shoulder in order to be at 100% for the first GP in South Africa. I’m travelling back to Brazil shortly and will return to Spain for the IRTA tests at the end of the month.”

Saturday best lap 1m33.5 81 laps
Sunday best lap 1m33.65 85 laps

Suzuki Report

Team Suzuki MotoGP completed the fourth tests of the new GP year at Valencia today with former World Champion Kenny Roberts Jr. reporting further progress on the road towards making the GSV-R MotoGP machine fully competitive.

They were, said team manager Garry Taylor, our best tests for two years.

Roberts was again joined by ex-Suzuki Superbike rider Gregorio Lavilla for the two days of testing at the Ricardo Tormo GP circuit. The Spanish racer was standing in for team regular rider John Hopkins, still sidelined by ankle injuries sustained in an off-road bike crash.

Following promising tests in Australia, the team reported further progress with the evolutionary process of the powerful 990cc V4 four-stroke GSV-R, the fastest racing motorcycle ever built by Suzuki. The team is still testing an interim machine, another development stage in the evolution towards the full 2004 racer.

"We're getting more and more things figured out every time and going faster on race tyres than we did last year on qualifying tyres. That's quite a big difference", said Roberts, before flying home to the States, to prepare for the next round of tests before the start of the season in South Africa in mid-April.

Team manager Garry Taylor also reflected the upbeat mood of the team after the tests., "As usual, we are not releasing lap times, but that was our most positive test for a couple of years. You can see by his manner how Kenny is feeling. He is a racer, and he has the sniff of a chance of success! It's the result of a lot of hard work from the factory, addressing the problems we had last year, and also a systematic programme of testing. We've made real progress", said Taylor.

He also thanked Spanish rider Lavilla for a very significant contribution. He's a really good rider, and he helped us to learn a lot. He and Kenny spoke a lot, and he made very similar comments about all the changes we tried.

Hopkins is expected to be fit for the next round of IRTA tests in Catalunya in three weeks.

Kenny Roberts - "We're getting more and more things figured out, and we're starting to get the bike so it has a better feeling. It's impossible to say that we re competitive already; it wouldn't be constructive to think about that. We can only base our progress on what we achieved last year and we d win every time compared with that. We are consistently faster on race tyres than we were last year on soft qualifying tyres, good for only a couple of laps. That's a pretty big change."

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Unofficial Times from day two

Hayden - 1m33.3 - 95 laps
Capirossi - 1m33.4 - 60 laps
Bayliss - 1m33.5 - 79 laps
Barros - 1m33.6 - 77 laps
Roberts - 1m34.1 - 62 laps
Lavilla - 1m35.0 - 56 laps
Aoki - 1m35.6 - 34 laps
Lucchi - 1m36.0 - 60 laps
Kurtis Roberts - 1m36.8 - 17 laps