2006 Australian Superbike Championship (YMF Loan) - Round Four - Queensland Raceway

Konica Minolta Preview

The tenth race of the 2006 MotoGP World Championship will be held this week end at the German circuit of Sachsenring. The second half of the 2006 Championship will bring this season’s protagonists up to the Valencia GP scheduled for October 29th to complete the 17 rounds of this absolutely demanding season.

The Sachsenring circuit was built in 1996 to make the car and bike races, held since 1920 on closed public roads of Chemnitz, less dangerous. The track was included in the MotoGP calendar in 1998. Since then many improvements have taken place; the most important, made in 2001, left the driving part intact but extended the fast sector including the straight. In 2003, the modifications were mainly focused on the enlargement of the paddock area with a minimum alteration of the track lay-out.

Makoto Tamada and the KONICA MINOLTA Honda Team get ready to face the challenge on the winding Sachsenring circuit after a break in which the Japanese rider has been committed, together with other HRC Honda Team riders, in the tests of the “Suzuka 8 hours” an endurance competition scheduled for July 30th.

Tamada’s best result in Sachsenring was set 2004; the KONICA MINOLTA Honda Team rider crossed the line in sixth position with a total time of 42’39.769”.

Gianluca Montiron – KONICA MINOLTA Honda General Director
“After some days break following the three consecutive European races, we are ready to come back working again and face the tenth GP of one of the most struggling championship of the recent years. All of us in the KONICA MINOLTA Honda team are ready, as usual, to provide Makoto with the maximum technical and moral support to permit him to approach the race in the best way.

Since its introduction in the MotoGP championship, the Sachsenring track originated contrasting opinions among this sector’s operators. Some consider it too narrow and tortuous for the MotoGP power, others consider the riders’ commitment in controlling their bike on this truck, rich in rhythm changes, amusing and spectacular.”

Makoto Tamada – KONICA MINOLTA Honda Rider
“On the Sachsenring circuit is always better if you do not have to make up positions. The track is tortuous, with no many long straights and, especially in the first part, it is difficult to overtake because the track is very narrow. In the last days, during the tests I made in Suzuka, I did not lower my concentration level. I come back to Europe ready to continue working with my Team, trying to improve the feeling with my RC211V .”

Giulio Bernardelle –KONICA MINOLTA Honda Technical Director
“The track runs in an anti-clockwise direction. It starts with a short climbing straight where the MotoGP bikes use all the six gears necessarily shortly set. The first part of the track is the slowest, characterized in particular by two long hairpins forcing the riders to be full banked for a long time. Corners become faster and faster, up to the back straight on a downhill slope, the second point where the MotoGP nearly get the 300km/h. The lap ends with two left corners in succession ridden by racers in third gear.”