Honda Road Racerhead #31

We’ve had to post sad news here in Road Racerhead more times than I care to count, but a piece of news that came down this week hit many in the U.S. moto-industry particularly hard, me included. Alex Edge, who wrote and rode for motorcycledaily.com as an associate editor, passed away this week in Houston. He was 25 years old. He was also warm, joyful, funny, and kind—he was the first to track down my hotel phone number and call to see if I was okay after hearing I’d crashed at a press event—as well as a talented photographer, a good friend, and one of those people you wish the world would always treat gently. His death wasn’t related to motorcycles, but those of us who got to know him through two-wheeled intros and events can be hugely glad his life was. There are no words for this kind of loss; our deepest sympathies go out to the Edge family.

There’s also no way to gracefully segue from a sorrow that profound to the regular news of the week, so forgive me for not trying to make a more eloquent job out of it. Alex loved fast machines of all kinds, and it’s in that sprit that we’ll return to the track.

Heartland Park Topeka, to be specific, where AMA Pro Road Racing is on track for the first time in the facility’s past seventeen years. (They’re also the only big series in action this weekend, though we have plenty of World SBK and MotoGP news for you later in the column.) The AMA last flew the flag there in 1991, but after negotiations and renovations—see this week’s Between the Races with HPT sales director Chris Gallas for some backstory—it’s become one of two new road race venues AMA Pro will visit this year. Unfortunately—and boy is it unfortunate, considering how little American professional road race series needed any additional controversy—its first-round return to the AMA fold hasn’t been entirely smooth.

I’m not in Kansas anymore (okay, I never was, it’s just hard to resist the Oz), but RRX photogs Brian J. Nelson and Tom Riles are there snapping away, and the big story is that if you’ve ever wondered what the sport would look like without Mat Mladin, you can see for yourself at Topeka this weekend. Mladin reportedly left the Heartland Park Topeka facility on Thursday night and headed back to California after riding briefly in promoter practice on Friday. Mladin was unhappy with some safety aspects of HPT and the six-time champion won’t add to his total of 82 official AMA Superbike wins this weekend.

According to the riders, there are several issues, but a wall in front of a culvert in Turn 1 seems to be the biggest issue. The promoter, M1, met with Yoshimura Suzuki’s Don Sakakura in the early evening to discuss whether a solution could be found, and track employees were moving walls late into the night. Rockstar Makita Suzuki teammates Blake Young and Tommy Hayden have decided to ride.

Foremost Insurance Ducati pilot Larry Pegram was quickest in the Superbike morning practice session with a time of 1:36.022, which was four tenths quicker than Jordan Suzuki’s Aaron Yates. Tommy Hayden was third quickest, while Yamaha teammates Josh Hayes and Ben Bostrom ended up fifth and sixth.

Also, word’s just come down that the motorcycle racing world received yet another sad blow this week, as Bruce Rossmeyer, owner of the AMA Bruce Rossmeyer Racing-sponsored RMR Buell teams, died in a motorcycling accident yesterday. Our hearts and deepest sympathies go out to his family and friends. Too much loss for one column.

Let’s head overseas, where www.motogpmatters.com’s David Emmett is ready to get us up-to-speed on the latest in the MotoGP and World Superbike worlds. Take it away, David.

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Thanks, Laurel. It’s now officially summer here in Europe and the roads heading south towards the Mediterranean will be grinding to a standstill (here’s a tip for any Road Racer X readers hitting France on Saturday: wait till Sunday to hit the highways). There’ll be a fair few riders, mechanics, and team members swelling the ranks of the annual summer migration, as after the Donington MotoGP round and the Czech round of World Superbikes at Brno, motorcycle racing in Europe grinds to a halt for a few weeks. Race fans will have plenty to talk about over the summer break, though, with both the MotoGP race and the World Superbike races providing more than enough food for thought to get us through until mid-August, when MotoGP returns to action at Brno.

Sunday’s British Grand Prix at Donington Park certainly had its share of interest, with the typically British weather throwing the entire MotoGP a curve ball, turning the race into one of the most invigorating and confusing we have seen for quite a while. So far this season, four men have dominated the proceedings. Until the British Grand Prix, Valentino Rossi, Jorge Lorenzo, Casey Stoner, and Dani Pedrosa had taken every podium place but one this year, the exception—in every sense of the word—being Marco Melandri’s outstanding second place in the flag-to-flag race at Le Mans. But in the damp and slick conditions at Donington Park, those front runners all slipped up (some of them literally) to a greater or lesser extent.

The weather had been strange all weekend, with rain making way for sunshine with alarming regularity. Friday practice was wet, then Saturday was mostly dry, but the rain returned on race day. The Fantastic Four (or the Untouchables, as Tech 3 boss Herve Poncharal called them) dominated the proceedings, taking the front four places on the grid, Rossi claiming pole for the fourth time this year. But as the race came, conditions got very difficult indeed.

The 125cc race had to be stopped and restarted due to rain (only the MotoGP class runs under flag-to-flag rules), then the 250cc race ran on a wet track that started to dry. Before the MotoGP race started, it started to sprinkle lightly, making Donington’s already treacherous track even more slippery than usual. Several riders almost highsided off on the sighting lap, and once back on the grid, some fairly heated arguments ensued over which tires to use. Jorge Lorenzo and Colin Edwards both said after the race that they had wanted to start on wets, Lorenzo’s crew chief, Ramon Forcada, requiring all of his powers of persuasion to get the Spanish superstar to stay on slicks. In the end, only the Ducati’s chose to “roll the dice” as Nicky Hayden later labeled it, fitting wets in the hope that it would start to rain just a fraction harder. It never did, but afterward everyone I spoke to said it could have gone either way. “It was fifty-fifty” Rossi told the assembled press after the race.

Toni Elias was the first to demonstrate just how tricky it was on the track, being tossed off his bike near Schwantz after touching the rumblestrip on the approach to the corner. Then Lorenzo touched the white line as he braked for Goddards, the front folding and sending his bike careering into the fence, damaging it beyond use. Lorenzo’s crash seemed like a gift to Rossi, who was running in second at the time, but ten laps later, Rossi was down too. He went through the Fogarty Esses just a fraction too fast, the rear tire getting away from him. The crash happened on a closed throttle, the rear losing grip because it was impossible to keep heat in the tire, according to the World Champion.

Rossi’s crash highlighted his legendary luck. The bike span round, ended in the dirt almost undamaged, and Rossi leapt back on board and rejoined the race. Initially, he was down in 11th, but within a couple of laps, a host of riders ahead of him entered the pits to swap bikes, gifting him four places. Pedrosa, riding extremely cautiously, gave Rossi another place, leaving only a last-lap pass on James Toseland for Rossi to finish fifth and get a big handful of points over his championship rivals, extending his lead to 25 points. In the Yamaha hospitality after the race, when Jorge Lorenzo was asked about being lucky not to lose more points to his title rivals, Lorenzo replied “Lucky? Valentino is lucky, he crashes and still gets a bigger lead in the championship!”

The Ducati gamble failed completely. Beforehand, Ducati team boss Livio Suppo had said the decision to run wet tires would make them look like either “heroes or idiots.” The fact that the rain just wouldn’t fall made it the latter. Hindsight, as they say, is always 20/20, and it’s easy to criticize after the fact. But the team thought the gamble was worth taking: Donington has one of the shortest pit lanes of the year, meaning a bike swap could be done very quickly if the track dried out, and if it rained a little harder, both Hayden and Stoner would soon be faster than the rest of the riders on slicks. But the British weather stubbornly refused to cooperate. “It was just a fingernail away from raining hard enough,” Stoner said, and the continuing drizzle was what kept the Ducatis out on track instead of coming in for slicks.

Both riders and Suppo emphasized afterward that it had been a rider decision. “It’s a safety decision,” Suppo said, “and I would never oblige a rider [to run slicks].” For Hayden, it was a gamble that he had little to lose from, starting the race from down in fifteenth after a couple of practice crashes. For Stoner, though, it was a symptom of his physical condition. “I’ve been happier in the wet than in the dry,” he said, and this may have had some bearing on his decision. When pushed about his condition, Stoner told us that he was still unconvinced that his problems were down to anemia. He will be going back to Australia for further tests, and to see a doctor who helped him with the shoulder injury he suffered before the start of the 2007 series. Stoner continued to emphasize that there must be a physical problem, firmly rejecting any suggestion of psychological pressure or stress.

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