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

Team Roberts Day 3 Report

Team Roberts Kenny Roberts Jr. was greeted in his pit box by the thunderous ovation of a crowd of more than 100 friends and family after nearly taking a podium finish on a sweltering day at his home track of Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca, site of the second annual Red Bull U.S. Grand Prix.

The success of Team Roberts in the 11th round of the MotoGP World Championship came as no surprise. Kenny Jr. had put the KR211V at the top of the time charts on Friday and backed that up by qualifying on the front row for the second time this season.

But the weekend was not without its troubles. The recently repaved 2.238-mile road course was littered with bumps and continued to deteriorate as the weekend went on. It became a crucial component in bike set-up, with compromises having to be made for both the bumps and the heat, and tire choice critical.

Off the start Roberts Jr. was right in the mix, slotting into second place and pressuring Suzuki’s Chris Vermeulen, the surprise leader, for the first nine of 32 taxing laps. Then fellow American Nicky Hayden came past and Roberts Jr. found himself in a very entertaining battle with two other Honda riders, Dani Pedrosa and Casey Stoner, both Laguna Seca debutantes.

In the blink of an eye Roberts Jr. went from third to fifth, and eventually sixth. But he never gave up, fighting back in the final five laps to gain back two positions and finish a very close fourth, less than a second from his second podium of the year, and in front of a partisan crowd of 51,378 sun-baked fans.

“I’m a little bit disappointed because I wanted to be closer to the leaders from the beginning,” Kenny Jr. said, “especially with Friday’s results.”

The top four finishers were all Honda-powered and on Michelin tires. Nicky Hayden won his second U.S. GP in a row, this time beating teammate Dani Pedrosa. Marco Melandri was third.

Kenny Roberts Jr., 4th Place
"I could tell right from the beginning that I just didn’t have the grip. Not so much with the Suzuki, but with the other Hondas. That’s the best we could do today. I was up to my maximum traction control early on and that’s usually a sign that I’m in trouble and I just tried to bring it home. I was similar to (Marco) Melandri, but at the end he started using the front a little bit more. I was just a tiny bit soft and when I tried to load it it was like using the tire too much, not the suspension, and just risking a crash. Just tried to stay with him as long as I could and hope he made a mistake and he didn’t. We showed up here and I didn’t want to change a lot. I didn’t want to tune ourselves out of it, I would say. We picked our poison, at least I did. And didn’t want to go the other way. And then you lose confidence. So I just stayed with something I knew I had."

Team Owner Kenny Roberts
"I think the racetrack went to them, which is something that now that we’re up there, we’ve got to get over that hump. Our set-up is a little bit more friendly, but when the grip comes and the race comes, we’re not quite there yet. We got everything, but we need…like I said in England, we’re about a quarter of a second off of where we need to be. We need to engineer a better motorcycle for race day, not for the first two days.
We’re working really hard on the new generation chassis for Brno because it is in that area that we’re talking about. But if you brought it here, the first day he would have junked it. But the third day it would work. So we’re trying to bring it back 20 or 30% so by the end of the first day he’ll be comfortable with it, where right now he wouldn’t be comfortable until race morning. Which is where Nicky’s at. He’s comfortable with his bike by race morning. We need to get there, but I don’t know when that’s going to be. We’re working on it. We know what the problem is. It’s just now how to fix it."