The Kyalami race has been officially cancelled, which means that after 4 events out of 12 the Superbike World Championship comes to Silverstone ready for the second third of the season. It is time for the Team Yamaha Motor France – Ipone to look back at what happened during the beginning of this year. The two best results for the team are the two beautiful fourth positions of Norick Abe at Valencia. The three riders of the team started so far 22 times (Sebastien Gimbert could not race in Valencia as he was participating on the same week-end to the 24 Hours of Le Mans). They finished 18 times, and 12 times with points. Norick Abe started 8 times, and finished 7 times, including 5 with points. Shinichi Nakatomi started 8 times and saw 7 times the finish line, including 4 times in the top 15. Sebastien Gimbert started 6 times, finished 4 times, of which 3 in the points. Generally speaking, the test sessions for development (one of the main purposes of the team) and settings were successful. For instance, it was the case recently in Brno where two riders of the team did very well on race tires. Gimbert did 2:02.6 and Nakatomi 2:03.4, compared to the unofficial record of the track belonging to Troy Corser (Suzuki) with a time of 2:02.694 since last year. So the team can reasonably hope positive results in the future. Norifumi Abe could not participate to these tests at Brno because he had to rest after his very impressive crash at Monza during practice. Happily, his head was not badly hurt and he is back in a great shape in the United Kingdom. Silverstone Story Silverstone was built on the site of a WWII RAF airfield. The first race was held there in 1948, Luigi Villoresi winning the R.A.C. Grand Prix in his Maserati. From May 13th 1950 to July 15th 2001, 35 Formula One GPs have been raced at Silverstone. Alain Prost holds the record for the biggest number of wins: 5 with Renault, McLaren, Ferrari and Williams. Silverstone also played host to the British Motorcycle Grand Prix from August 14th 1977 to August 3rd 1986. Kenny Roberts (Yamaha) won the biggest number of 500 GPs there and Kork Ballington (Kawasaki) did the same in 250s. Both won three times while Angel Nieto won six 125 GPs (three with Minarelli and three with Garelli). Silverstone started life as a very high-speed circuit. In essence, it was all straights joined together by a few fast turns. Over the years, the track layout was changed to slow it down. Today there are six possible track configurations: Grand Prix (5.140 km), International (3.624 km), South (3.170 km), National (2.637 km), Stowe (1.281 km) and Rally Sprint (1.920 km). This permanent racing circuit is 15 meters wide, can accommodate up to 90,000 spectators and has 60,000 grandstand seats. Silverstone is 100 kms north of London, 25 kms south/west of Northampton, 74 kms north/west of Oxford and 5 kms west of Towcester in Northamptonshire.