MotoGP 2005

The frantic pace of the MotoGP season continues with an even shorter break before the next round at the Losail International Raceway in Qatar this Saturday – the third race in as many weeks.

With the championship decided a week ago in Sepang, Malaysia there is now a massive battle between seven riders for the ‘best of the rest’ award as Max Biaggi described it at a recent Dorna press conference.

It’s a race that the 34-year-old Italian currently leads, some 17 points ahead of his on-form compatriot Loris Capirossi who has won the last two races at Motegi, Japan and at Sepang last weekend. With four races left of the ’05 season and 100 points available it will be hotly contested battle. Biaggi’s team-mate Nick Hayden, who rode so strongly at Sepang a week ago to claim his first lap record and end up being the first Honda home, lies just 25 points behind Biaggi in the fight for honours.

The riders return to Losail where they raced for the first time last year in the extraordinary heat. Hayden finished the inaugural Qatar GP in fifth place with Biaggi one place behind. The event will be remembered by many as the race where Valentino Rossi and Biaggi were penalised for rule infringements leading up to the race and as a result started the race from the back of the grid. Rossi crashed out of the contest while Biaggi sliced his way through the field showing his race-craft to the full.

Two weeks after Qatar the MotoGP circus fly’s to the southern hemisphere for the Australian Grand Prix (16th October) before jetting back to Europe for the new round in Turkey (23rd October) and finally the season curtain call in Valencia, Spain on 6th November.

Max Biaggi
“Last year I remember we had the stupid incident where I had to start the race from the back of the grid. The whole weekend up to this point had been not so good anyway. We couldn’t find the best set-up for the machine and we could only get on the third row of the grid. With the penalty I had to start from the back and went from 24th position to 6th place at the end of the race. I go there with high expectation but it is not easy at the moment. The situation in the championship table looks better than it is. We have second place in the championship even though we struggle at nearly every track this year. I can only dream about where we might be if things had gone well. However I never give up and will be looking to work hard with my team to get the machine to work well for the race next week.”

Nicky Hayden
“I remember Qatar as a pretty strange country from our visit last year – way different from where I come from – but I kinda’ liked it. I’m going to have to get into the sprit of the place as soon as we arrive as I think I’m down to be doing some camel riding and having some henna tattoos as part of the Dorna pre-event publicly that we all have to do from GP to GP. Should be fun. As for the track, I struggled there last year and never felt that comfortable from the start. We’ve moved on as team a lot and we have a real tight group of guys at the moment and I’m sure we can up with something that should feel good round there. Gotta’ keep up the pressure for the rest of the season. I don’t want to be finishing were I am now in sixth. I’m only 25 points behind second place and that’s where I’m aiming with 100 points still to play for.”

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