From a press release issued by Team Suzuki:

MISSION RESUMES FOR TEAM SUZUKI
Team Suzuki Press Office – August 17, 2004.

MotoGP racing resumes at Brno next Sunday after a welcome three-week layoff and for Team Suzuki, it is back to business as usual – to continue to develop and refine the ever-improving GSV-R MotoGP prototype racer.

There will be three of the blue Suzukis on the grid; team regulars Kenny Roberts Jr. and John Hopkins joined by official test team rider Gregorio Lavilla, a wild card entry for the Czech Republic GP. All will be going for the best possible race results then staying on for two days of testing – all part of the long-term programme to bring the traditional racing factory back to winning races and challenging for the championship.

The first half of the season – actually nine of the 16 races – was an encouraging and motivating experience for the Suzuki riders and team. Changes wrought to the third version of the GSV-R V4 brought out the best in the powerful prototype and a new alliance with Bridgestone tyres also brought rapid progress.

It showed in ever-improving lap times and race results: 2000 World Champion Kenny Roberts qualified on pole at Rio, the seventh round, where he led away from the start, finishing seventh, his best so far. Kenny was on the front row again in Germany for the next race where he and team-mate John Hopkins claimed a double top-ten finish. Hopkins’s best race was the British GP, after early-season misfortunes, pushing through to a fighting eighth after starting only 16th fastest.

The biggest improvement has come in rideability of the machine compared with earlier versions; at the same time a revised engine with different firing intervals – and a more musical exhaust note – has brought further progress, along with a raft of detail changes throughout the machine.

The three-weekend summer break gave tired riders and race crews a chance to recoup, regroup and relax. Roberts and Hopkins both returned to the USA in the break with Hopkins putting in a week in Hawaii.

Back in Japan, the factory race department was hard at work, consolidating the lessons and improvements of the first half of the season, to come back stronger still for the second part.

Team Manager Garry Taylor sums up the team’s philosophy, and the reason for the spirit that has re-enthused the factory squad.

“Everybody at Suzuki knows that we are capable of winning the championship – the riders, the team and the factory engineers. We’ve made a lot of progress this year which has been highly motivating. But this is still very much work in progress. We’re not where we want to be and we’re all anxious to get back to the programme,” he said.

One target for the factory engineers is to increase horsepower, especially important for Brno where a steep uphill straight out of a slow corner leads to the final turns of the long and technically-complicated lap. The sharp climb puts a heavy emphasis on pure acceleration at a crucial point of the circuit leading to the finish line.

With testing banned, the race will be the first chance for riders and team to resume progress with their machines. “We will be assessing the latest ideas and developments over the weekend for the race, then in more detail at tests for two days after the race,” said Taylor.

“Our goal is to maintain our rate of improvement until we are challenging for the title again,” he concluded.

KENNY ROBERTS – BACK TO WORK:

“The break was good but I guess we’re ready to start racing again. Over the past races, we’d been qualifying better and getting the best out of this year’s bike. The changes made it much easier to ride at the limit. Now we need to take the next step, with more improvements. We’re all ready for it, as a team and as riders.”

JOHN HOPKINS – AIMING HIGH AS ALWAYS:

“I headed to the USA for the summer and after six days in Hawaii I’ve been cycling and training. Temperature-wise it’s like training for Qatar! It’s been over 100 degrees pretty much every day. I like Brno and there have been tons of improvement to the bike so I’ll aim for a top five, as always.”

ABOUT THIS RACE:

There has been motorcycle racing at Brno since long before the birth of the World Championship in 1949, but the first GP was 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, 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.

The last time the premier-class GP bikes raced there was in 1977, though the smaller classes continued until 1982 before the dangerous track was dropped from the GP calendar. Local enthusiasts achieved backing from the communist regime to build a show-piece new purpose-built closed circuit, with a long lap and a challenging layout, first used in 1987. 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 pit buildings and paddock facilities were rebuilt to keep the track’s standards high.

The race attracts big crowds, packing the vast natural grandstands. They also come for 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) and an average speed of more than 100mph are the key to Brno which has wide sweeping corners and only short straights. “Vertical corners” are an added complication, riders struggling with treacherous front-wheel grip as the corners drop away for the first half of the lap. Speeds are high and Brno rewards handling finesse and high corner speed more than raw horsepower, but for that final uphill straight. “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: 1:59.966 – 100.747 mph / 162.136 km/h. V Rossi (Honda), 2004.
2003 Race Winner: Rossi.
2003 Race Average: 44:18.907 – 1900.02 mph / 160.937 km/h.
2004 Fastest Race Lap: see lap record.
2004 Pole Position: Rossi (Honda) 1:58.769.
2004 KENNY ROBERTS: 20th, qualified 16th (Suzuki).
2004 JOHN HOPKINS: 17th, qualified 13th (Suzuki).