From a press release issued by Fuchs Kawasaki:

FUCHS KAWASAKI RACING TEAM BACK IN ACTION AT BRNO

Refreshed, fit and ready for the resumption of the MotoGP battle after the summer break, the Fuchs Kawasaki Racing Team return to the fray in this weekend’s Czech Republic Grand Prix at Brno.

Regular Australian team riders Garry McCoy and Andrew Pitt, plus German wild card Alex Hofmann, have all taken advantage of the three week European summer break to recharge their batteries since last month’s German Grand Prix.

For the holidays the Kawasaki riders spread across a hot, sun-baked Europe with Hofmann and Pitt heading for the beach, while McCoy retreated to his alpine apartment in the Pyrenees principality of Andorra.
Southern Italy was Hofmann’s destination while Pitt went to the French coast near Marseille to link up with reigning Supersport 600 World Champion, and Kawasaki colleague, Fabien Foret.

The Czech Republic Grand Prix will be Hofmann’s fourth wild card race of the season, although, like Pitt, he will be lining up for his first MotoGP race appearance at the challenging 5.4 km Brno circuit, which features a sequence of fast, sweeping downhill and uphill sections across forested hillsides.

However with the benefit of last month’s intensive two-day test session aboard the Ninja ZX-RR both Pitt and Hofmann are at ease with the Brno layout as they face the challenge of the tenth round of the World Championship.

Meanwhile McCoy is a Brno regular having soldiered through many on-track battles in both 125 and 500cc Czech Grand Prix. And McCoy’s fearless style has been rewarded with some brilliant Brno results in recent years.

Garry McCoy
“As a rider I certainly know what it takes to be on the front row and the podium at Brno, but unfortunately this race is still a bit early in the development of a new bike to aim for that this weekend. My main focus is to keeping working closely with bike and tyre technicians to build on the work we did at the recent Brno test; both Kawasaki and Dunlop are throwing all their available technology at the project, moving forward step-by-step. The holiday break was perfect for me; I enjoyed being at home in Andorra, going to the gym every day even though it was 35 degrees even in the alps; at least it was cool in the evenings to get some sleep.”

Andrew Pitt
“It was great spending some time with Fabien Foret and we managed to fit it quite a bit of jet skiing and wake boarding, we had to, it was bloody hot. I did quite a bit of cycle training in the hills to stay fit, but in the end the heat was a bit much; it was 39 degrees one day so I headed back to Germany and then Austria for a few days. In Austria I spent a day catching up with a fitness trainer who has worked in Formula One just discussing some new training ideas. As for Brno I really enjoyed the track when we tested there last month, it’s big, wide and fast and even though the performance of the Kawasaki is not exactly where everyone would like it to be at the moment I’m motivated to get the best result possible.”

Alex Hofmann
“I’m almost black from spending almost everyday on the beach in southern Italy. It has been really been fun and relaxing although I have been on my bicycle for two hours every evening making sure I stay fit. The Brno track is quite technical and fast and one that I really like; I’m hopeful that I will have a good chance of scoring some championship points there. At our recent test in Brno there was a good step forward with the new Dunlop tyres, especially side grip, and the data from the test should give us a good starting point for the ZX-RR set-up this weekend.”



More, from a press release issued by Team Suzuki News Service:

SUZUKI TEAM BACK TO BUSINESS AT BRNO

Team Suzuki riders Kenny Roberts Junior and John Hopkins return to the fray at Brno this weekend, for a race that bisects the 2003 summer break.

The magnificent Brno circuit – fast, technically challenging, and with superb natural grandstands for the vast crowd – acts as a pivot point of the season. Although it is the tenth of 16 rounds, in other ways the Czech Republic GP marks the start of the second half of a season of rare interest and excitement.

Until the last round in Germany, after the season-starting flyaways, the European season had been proceeding apace, with a race at least every fortnight. Then came two weekends off.

Brno is followed by another two free weekends, one more European round in Portugal, then the gruelling end-of-season final flyaways take in four countries – Brazil, Japan, Malaysia and Australia – in five weekends. Then comes the grand finale, in Valencia on November 2.

Team Suzuki’s focus for the season has been aimed at achieving the best possible results in the relentless racing programme while at the same time race-developing their ground-breaking 2003 machine. The task is to get all the radical technical solutions to work in the harmony needed to turn top-ten finishes into rostrums.

Brno is a staging post in that progress, and the second race for new race department head Toshiyuki Yamada, who took over in a recent factory reshuffle. Yamada-San, who was part of the original design team of the hugely successful Suzuki RG500 of the Seventies and Eighties, and more recently worked with the Superbike racing project, was also at the German GP. He adds years of racing experience to the team working to get the full potential out of the powerful 990cc V4 racing prototype GSV-R.

The machine was completely redesigned for this season, and so far has achieved a best of seventh place at Jerez, ridden by four-stroke rookie Hopkins. Roberts’s season was spoiled by an injury sustained at the Italian GP, and he missed the next three races before returning for the last round, at the Sachsenring in Germany.

“We’re very aware of the effort the factory is putting into this project, and we’re all still fully confident we can achieve our goal,” said team manager Garry Taylor. “We have all the ingredients – two superlative riders, a top title-winning race team, and a motorcycle that is pushing the technical boundaries.

“Brno is another chance to get them all working together to maximum effect, and you can be sure we will be making the most of it,” he said.

One challenge for the big new four-stroke GP machines and their riders will be the extreme heat that threatens the race, as a heatwave that gave warning at the early European rounds in Italy, Catalunya and the Netherlands has strengthened its grip.

In the heart of the continent, the landlocked Czech Republic has been enduring sweltering temperatures and near drought conditions. If these persist, they will add to the challenge of an already demanding circuit. It is also highly possible that overdue rains may come, repeating near flood conditions encountered at the circuit in the past.


KENNY ROBERTS – THE HEAT IS NO BIG DEAL
Everyone makes a big thing, but it hasn’t really been a holiday. It’s the same length of break as between the first and second races. I’ve been at home in a typical Californian summer, so I’m not worried about the conditions. The heat races are not a big deal for me, and I generally do okay in them. Of course it might rain at Brno. For this race, I’m waiting to see what the factory will bring in the way of parts or new solutions. I hope we can improve our situation.


JOHN HOPKINS – MAKING UP FOR LAST YEAR
This is one of my favourite tracks. It’s big enough that you can really open the bikes up, but also technical. You can really string the fast corners together, and horsepower isn’t everything. Last year I qualified on the second row of the grid on the two-stroke, and I was hoping for a good race. Instead I got a radiator leak right from the start, and I had to pull in to the pits. I hope this year I can make up for it.


ABOUT THIS RACE
There has been motorcycle racing at Brno for longer than the 53 years of the World Championship, but GP racing came here only in 1965. The country was then Czechoslovakia, behind the Iron Curtain, and the venue was an 8.6-mile (13.9km) public-roads circuit on the outskirts of the city, which is famed for its precision engineering (Brno gave its name to the famous “Bren-gun” of World War Two). That track was itself the third version of what had been an even longer road circuit, with part of that first ever track now used as an access road.

The last time the premier-class GP bikes raced there was in 1977, when they were 500cc, though the smaller classes continued until 1982 before the dangers forced the track off the GP calendar. But local enthusiasts along with a communist party anxious to build a sporting show-piece pushed ahead with a magnificent new purpose-built closed circuit, with a long lap and a challenging layout, first used in 1987, with the 500cc class back. Soon afterwards, political turmoil saw the Iron Curtain collapse and the Czechoslovakian GP last ran in 1991.

In 1993, the race resumed, with a new name to go with the new political freedoms – the Czech Republic GP, and four years ago new pit buildings and extended paddock facilities were built to keep the track’s standards up with the best.

The race attracts huge crowds, packing the vast natural grandstands. As well as the race, they enjoy the liberated atmosphere and cheap beer of the new country, making Brno a popular and important fixture on the calendar.


ABOUT THIS TRACK
A long lap of 3.357 miles (5.403 km), an average speed nudging 100mph and no really slow turns are the key to Brno – a wide circuit made up of long, sweeping corners and few straights. “Vertical corners” are an added complication, while although the average speed is high, the track rewards handling finesse and high corner speed more than brute acceleration and a high top speed. For most of the first part of the lap the track falls away steadily, making precise steering difficult as the front goes light. Then the track climbs sharply again after a long right-hander, imposing different demands on the rider and machine. “You have the bike on its side for a real long time, and one corner flows into the next. At the same time, there are places where you open the throttle wide and hold it there. It’s probably my favourite track,” said Kenny Roberts, who claimed his first front row qualifying position there in 1996, his first year riding a 500.


GP DATA

Brno

Circuit Length: 3.357 miles / 5.403 km.

Lap Record: 2:00.605 – 100.212mph / 161.276km/h. D Kato (Honda), 2002

2002 Race Winner: M Biaggi (Yamaha)

2002 Race Average: 44:36.498 – 99.344mph / 159.879km/h.

2002 Fastest Race Lap: see lap record

2002 Pole Position: Biaggi 1:59.646

2002 KENNY ROBERTS: 11th, Qualified 19th (Telefónica MoviStar Suzuki)

2002 SETE GIBERNAU: Fourth, Qualified ninth (Telefónica MoviStar Suzuki)

2002 JOHN HOPKINS: DNF – retired, Qualified seventh (Red Bull Yamaha)