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

Team Roberts Day 1 Report

Team Roberts’ Kenny Roberts Jr. returned to the site of some of his father’s greatest triumphs by setting the fastest lap on the first day of practice for Sunday’s Red Bull United States Grand Prix at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca.

Roberts Jr. began the day by setting the fastest time in the morning session, held on a brilliant sunlit day in the hills east of Monterey, California, then backed it up with another blazing lap in the afternoon session for his home grand prix. What made his performance more impressive was that the track was full of surprises. The legendary 2.2-mile road circuit had been recently repaved and slightly reconfigured, and no one had ridden it before Friday morning.

And despite the fresh layer of asphalt, the racing surface was riddled with bumps, which made for a special challenge for the Team Roberts technical crew.

But none of that mattered. Keeping up the momentum of the past several grands prix, Roberts Jr. tamed the bumps with the KR211V en route to a time that was faster than the best lap from last year’s U.S.GP.

Roberts Jr. clocked a best of 1:23.859, a full. 266 seconds faster than the next rider, who was also Honda-mounted, as were the third and fourth fastest riders. It was also faster than the best race lap of 1:23.915 turned in last year’s U.S.GP.

The former 500cc World Champion will be looking to maintain his momentum in tomorrow afternoon’s qualifying session and again in Sunday’s race, the 11th round of the MotoGP World Championship.

Kenny Roberts Jr., 1st, 1:23.859
Everybody seems to be having the same issues. I think our settings that the team came here have adapted to this circuit a little bit better than anyone else. I don’t really know what to do. I told Warren (Willing), ‘You’re just going to have to tune this thing.’ It’s like, OK, there’s a bump one lap and there’s not the next, so you can’t set it up for a bump. So I just try to get the balance as good as I can. It’s like you’ve got to just ride this thing around and use the most grip you can and go as fast as you can and then I don’t know what to do after that. You could change little clickers here and there, but I don’t see it. I felt comfortable. The tire I was on this morning felt better, but it may not be in the direction that they thought they were going to go in. So I’m sure tomorrow Michelin is going to have something based off this morning. This morning it was quite easy to go quick. This afternoon it seemed OK, I just think Michelin’s going to come up with something overnight.

Kenny Roberts
The racetrack’s very bumpy and very new and we seem to have the right combination for the new racetrack. You know, we hit the mark pretty close the last couple of grand prixs when we arrived and it seems that it comes together quite quickly. So we’re happy with that. We haven’t made a significant change since we got here, but because the racetrack is so slippery and bumpy, there’s not the fine tuning that you’re normally working on. It’s so bumpy and the traction’s so inconsistent, it’s like, ‘I don’t know.’ If it works over the bumps better it’s going to go faster at the moment. We don’t have to fine tune it to whether it’s pushing the front or losing the rear. It also seems to be quite easy on the tires. I’ve seen some of the other guys were struggling.