RAPP SURPRISE LEADER OF AMA FORMULA XTREME SERIES Spies leading the way in AMA Superstock PICKERINGTON, Ohio (April 17, 2007) Steve Rapp earned the biggest win of his career last month by taking a surprise victory in the Daytona 200. Now the Attack Kawasaki rider approaches the rest of the Lockhart-Phillips USA Formula Xtreme Series presented by HMR with the confidence the Daytona victory gave him. Rapp will be one of the favorites when the series comes to Barber Motorsports Park, in Birmingham, Ala., on Saturday, April 21. Rapp is still basking in the glory of winning the historic Daytona 200 on March 10. Now the resident of Manhattan Beach, Calif., turns his attention to the balance of the Formula Xtreme season. He and teammate Ben Attard, who finished second in Daytona and comes to Barber ranked second in the series, will attempt to give Kawasaki its first Formula Xtreme title. Rapp feels his new ride with Attack Kawasaki may be the spark his racing career needed. “For me to be on a new team, on a new bike, with new tires, just makes me feel good that maybe over the years I just didn’t have the right combination,” said Rapp, who turned pro in 1996. “I never tried a lot of different things. I was always just with one team, one brand of this, one brand of that. Until you get around to trying everything, you don’t know. I think that’s the case with this. You get on a good bike with good tires on a good team, and it just suits my style. Not to say that the other teams weren’t good or the tires weren’t good, but maybe they didn’t work with the way I rode.” M4 EMGO Suzuki’s Michael Barnes is third in the Formula Xtreme standings after earning his first podium in the Daytona 200. Barnes, 38, of Boca Raton, Fla., is one of the most experienced riders in the AMA paddock and he feels like he is ready to make a serious bid at the Formula Xtreme title. “I’m really excited to see the progress Pirelli has made with its racing tires,” Barnes said. “They’ve shown their commitment to our team and the series and I think that’s going to pay dividends this season.” Another impressive performer at Daytona was young Brit Chaz Davies. Davies finished fourth at Daytona on the Celtic Performance Yamaha and he impressed a lot of experts with his speed and race savvy at Daytona. It will be interesting to see how Davies performs at Barber, a track that’s considered a real riders’ circuit. Defending series champ Josh Hayes got off to a less than stellar start to the season, with fuel-related problems with his Erion Honda at Daytona. He made it to the finish with extra pit stops and was able to salvage a sixth-place finish in the opener. Hayes realizes he now has a tall task of working his way back into the position to defend his championship. The Mississippi native will be among the favorites at Barber. While Formula Xtreme appears to be wide open in 2007, Ben Spies is a clear-cut favorite in AMA Superstock this year. Last year Spies seemed to approach his second class (last year Supersport) with less than 100 percent commitment, instead focusing on earning his first AMA Superbike title. This year Spies, of Longview, Texas, feels the situation is different. “Our Suzuki is so strong that I think it’s the best bike in the field,” Spies said. “Having the best bike is going to make things a lot easier on me in my effort to win two championships this year. I don’t think Superstock distracts from my Superbike efforts. The bike is so similar in many ways to the Superbike that it actually helps me for both classes. My goal is to win both titles this year.” Suzuki is loaded in Superstock with Spies leading the way and other top Suzuki riders hoping to keep pace. M4 EMGO Suzuki’s Geoff May, Jordan Suzuki riders Aaron Yates and Jake Holden, Matsushima Suzuki’s Danny Eslick and Chris Ulrich, of Roadracingworld.com Suzuki all are proven contenders in the class. Yates, of Milledgeville, Ga., is the defending Barber Superstock winner. Ben Bostrom, with the Graves Motorsports Yamaha team, is the one non-Suzuki rider with a serious shot at winning the title. A former AMA Superbike Champion, Bostrom finished runner up to Spies at Daytona and he loves riding the Graves Yamaha R1 Superstock bike. “I’m getting comfortable on the R1 very quickly,” Bostrom said. “If we continue to improve I think we have a legitimate shot at winning Superstock this year. It feels great because it’s been a while since I felt I had this kind of chance at a championship.” Tickets for the 5th annual Honda Superbike Classic at Barber Motorsports Park can be purchased via the website www.barbermotorsports.com or you can charge by phone at (205) 327-RACE or 1-800-240-2300. The Barber Formula Xtreme and Superstock races will be shown on SPEED on Tuesday, April 24 at Noon Eastern.

Racer Dan Jasa (Great Plains CCS #414) married Jenny Kissel April 14 in St. Louis, Missouri.

By Kurt Whittington With ambient temperatures in the mid 50s and winds constant at over 30 mph Sunday, the fourth round of the 2007 WSMC series at Willow Springs Raceway was run under extreme weather conditions. “If you like an adrenaline rush, this is the way to do it,” commented HRC test rider Jeff Tigert regarding the wind during the Toyota Cup Formula One race. Tigert finished second in the race to Lee Cycle’s Jeremy Toye who said he had more “moments” due to the wind during the F1 race and his 600 class races than he’d like to recall. “That was a lot of work out there with the wind. It was pushing the whole time,” Toye said. “Once all the cones started blowing onto the track, I started thinking yeah, this can’t be happening. That was a whole new element – having to pick a new line with the wind blowing so hard, but also had to pick new lines to dodge the cones. I thought what’s next, is the sky falling?” On his GSX-R 1000 running 16.5 Dunlop slicks, Toye led every lap of the 12-lap race. In the early goings he was followed by Advanced Kawasaki’s Robbie Dowie, however Dowie crashed in turn one on lap five. While trying to fight the wind and dodge a cone that had blown onto the track, Dowie hit the inside curbing in turn one at his apex and low-sided. After a bit of a slow start, Tigert, on his Jett Performance-prepped CBR1000RR, caught up to Toye a little past the halfway point in the race. Tigert stayed on Toye’s rear tire for several laps and showed Toye a wheel a couple of times, but never made a pass for the lead. With about two laps to go, however, Tigert felt his rear 16.5 Dunlop slick really going off and he decided it was better to drop back and finish second then risk crashing out in the wind and not finishing at all. “I kind of had to work my tire a little harder than I wanted to to catch [Toye] and I could tell that he was being really smooth with his tire when I got up to him. When the grip started going down and I realized that we had a big gap behind us, so I just followed him into the finish,” Tigert said. Coming out on top of a close, race-long battle with Chris Duran and Jack Pfeifer, Sport Tire Services sponsored Jeff Stern finished third. Stern said that his Rusty Schaeffer-tuned GSX-R1000 running on 16.5-Dunlop slicks seemed to handle better than Pfeifer’s bike in the wind, but Stern still had to make a hard pass on Pfeifer to take over third place. “His bike has a little better straight line speed than ours and I figured if I got him in turn eight he’d go back by me on the front straight,” Stern explained and said that he had to try to make his pass in the slower section of the track and try to gap Pfeifer before they got back to the high-speed section. Stern made his move entering turn two on the sixth lap. “[Pfeifer] checked up a couple of times getting into turn two, so I just rolled in [on the outside] and chopped his front wheel off,” said the WSMC veteran. Pfeifer finished fourth and Duran rounded out the top five. More, from a press release issued by Kenny Kopecky: WSMC Round 4 – April 14-15, 2007 Willow Springs International Raceway Rosamond, CA Moto Forza Ducati supported roadracer Kenny Kopecky won a pair of races at Willow Springs Sunday, taking the holeshot in both Formula Twins Heavyweight and BOTT Heavyweight from his second row grid positions, and leading both races to their conclusion. The victories bring the San Diego racers’ WSMC sprint race record in 2007 to 8 wins in 8 starts in the past month, with his next planned race appearance at the Streets of Willow race on May 6th. The wind conditions were “miserable” as described by Kenny throughout the weekend, and after skipping the entire Saturday practice day Kenny rode the clubs’ opening Saturday Solo series race, a 20-lap 50 mile event. Running on the same set of Dunlop tires used in two race wins at the March WSMC meet, Kenny took a quick but brief lead as Robbie Dowie warmed up slowly and toyed with Kenny for several laps. With an admitted “complete lack of training” Kopecky could not continue his typical sprint race pace after 25 miles, and was demoted to third by Mitchell Wissner. Kenny gamely hung as close as he could for the remaining 10 laps, finishing 2.1 seconds behind 2nd place after 50 miles. After the race Kenny stated “…with the high winds and a bit too much arm pump I was cooked! It was fun to have Robbie mess with me for a few laps, and I was reasonably pleased as those were my first laps on our Ducati 999R-05 in four weeks. Robbie didn’t really go much faster as he went ahead to win, and after I slowed just hanging onto Mitch was a huge chore. They both rode really well in the wind, and we’re sure to have some more fun racing together at the upcoming Solo meets!” For the sprint racing on Sunday, Kopecky again skipped the practice sessions and had mounted fresh Dunlop race slicks. He added “The races were extremely difficult with these changing wind conditions! Our first race early in the day was completly different than the second win late in the afternoon, and it was truly a day to just get through and look forward to some harder, faster riding at a future event. My family and I would also like to extend our sincerest best wishes and our prayers are with those who fell and were injured over the weekend”. Kopecky, who turned 48 on Saturday at the track (and is celebrating his 25th year as a competitor in roadracing at Willow Springs) isn’t competing for series awards at the main course any longer after his dominating 2005 WSMC Championship season. However, he has decided to attempt a few more WSMC Class Championship title runs! “Yep, we had so much fun over at that first WSMC Streets of Willow race two weeks ago! We’ll be back for their remaining Streets races with our Moto Forza Husqvarna SMR Single, and we’ll see if we can bring a couple more class titles back to the shop for the guys!” The next WSMC Streets of Willow race is May 5-6, 2007 and the next WSMC main track event is May 18-20, 2007.

Interview with Red Bull KTM Technical Director Harald Bartol Harald Bartol talks about technical development in the two-stroke categories, high expectations for the next races — and the successful debut of the Red Bull Rookies Cup. At the first Grand Prix in Qatar, Aprilia seemed unbeatable. But at the second race in Jerez, the Red Bull KTM 125 was the fastest bike on the track. A nice surprise? Bartol: I didn’t expect anything else. I wouldn’t have understood where Aprilia’s big advantage came from, despite their new system with the rotary valve now sitting behind the cylinder. Alvaro Bautista created big hopes for Aprilia when he dominated the field with this new bike in the final race last season. But it was he as a rider that was superior, not the bike. Guys like Mattia Pasini would now have more chances to fight for race wins and the title if they were, like Gabor Talmacsi, on Aprilia’s old 125 cc version. The new rotary valve system is still full of technical problems. It’™s just too new yet. Having said that, I don’t want to hide the fact that Aprilia’s overall package is currently better than ours. The bike is easier to ride and easier to set up. We had different priorities last winter and now we have to catch up in this area. This is surprising. Aren’t two-stroke engines with reed valve intake like the Red Bull KTM easier to manage and more user-friendly than engines with rotary valve intake? Bartol: Who says that? This is nothing but an old rumour that certain people repeat in order to protect themselves. When reed valve engines first came up many years ago, the driveability was indeed better – because other components on these bikes, like the electrical systems, were further advanced. But in general, rotary valve engines with their fixed valve timing are much easier to manage than reed valve engines with their reed valves doing whatever they want to do as far as valve timing goes. The fact that we at KTM developed reed valve engines has other reasons: The construction is less complicated and, at the end of the day, it’s less expensive. One of the highlights so far was teenager Steve Bonsey, who took points in Jerez with hardly any road racing experience at all. What do you expect from him? Bartol: He is still learning, but he is learning fast. I really believe in this guy. He has the attitude of a true racer, and he’s got a lot of dirt track racing experience. It’s obvious that he can’t acquire all road racing skills over night, but it is only a matter of time until he develops the feeling for Grand Prix racing. I am sure that we will hear a lot more from Steve as the season goes on. The whole story started when we couldn’t find a potential race winner for this year. Then Kenny Roberts rang and told us about Steve, and we decided to take a risk and throw him in at the deep end. Of course he wants to end up in MotoGP racing one day, but I am convinced that going through the small two-stroke categories is the best path to take. If Nicky Hayden had started his road racing career on such a motorcycle, he wouldn’t have the problems that he’s got now. Superbike racing just doesn’t get you where you need to be for Grand Prix racing. So far, you didn’t have much to celebrate in the 250 cc class. Hiroshi Aoyama got injured, and Mika Kallio’s bike stopped in both races. Were these mechanical failures just bad luck or is there more to it? Bartol: We have tried to analyse what happened as thoroughly as possible, and found out that it was a combination of bad luck and other factors. The broken piston ring that caused Kallio’s bike to seize in Qatar was not a supply problem but a machining one, which had to do with our time restraints. The only bad luck was the fact that this piston ring broke at that particular moment. As far as the broken gear sprocket on Kallio’s bike in Jerez goes, it turned out that we somehow reached the limit of what our current material can take. For the future, we have to think how to strengthen certain parts. For now, we just have to shorten the replacement intervals of these items. Considering that the Red Bull KTM 125 was the fastest bike on the track in Jerez, is there a chance for the twin-cylinder Red Bull KTM 250 to be the same once all problems are sorted? Bartol: So far, we have concentrated all of our efforts with the 250 on rideability. We are also working on new performance parts, but we will only introduce them for the race in Shanghai. If everything works out the way we hope, then our 250 will be clearly faster than it is now. But we also have to be careful: There is some homework left for us to do with the balance shaft, and all in all, the mechanical system of the 250 is much more complicated than the 125. The first Red Bull KTM Rookie’s Cup race in Jerez was fun to watch. Was it also a success from your point of view? Bartol: We arrived in Spain with butterflies in our stomachs because everything had happened at such short notice, and we didn’t know how it would all work out. But I have to thank the entire crew. They did a great job. You have to consider that we not only have rookies riding these bikes but also apprentices doing all the service work. Minor incidents apart, this system worked really well. This cup is surely the best that I have ever seen. It exactly meets the goals that Red Bull has set: from the overall presentation in the paddock and on the track to the fact that it will flush out the most talented riders, regardless of their background or household income.

ISTANBUL: WHERE THE NEW TIRE RULES REALLY BITE Michelin riders go into the Turkish Grand Prix following a dominant display at last month’s Spanish GP where Valentino Rossi (Fiat Yamaha Team YZR-M1-Michelin) won ahead of Dani Pedrosa (Repsol Honda Team RC212V-Michelin) and Colin Edwards (Fiat Yamaha Team YZR-M1-Michelin). Rossi now leads the World Championship, while Pedrosa is equal second on points with Casey Stoner (Ducati Marlboro Team Desmosedici GP7). The Turkish GP is set to be the most challenging so far this year because Istanbul Park is the first circuit that didn’t feature in preseason tests, so tire companies have no recent data to help riders select their allocation of 31 tires, according to new MotoGP rules. At the Qatar and Spanish GPs riders and teams were able to choose tires according to the tests they’d done at those tracks just weeks before the season began. Thus from Istanbul onwards the challenge facing Michelin and its rival tire companies is bigger than ever before. Michelin riders dominated both the inaugural 2005 Turkish GP and the 2006 event, filling the first four positions in 2005 and the first five places last year. MICHELIN & THE TECHNICAL CHALLENGE OF ISTANBUL PARK “First of all, I’d like to say thanks to our team partners for doing such a great job at Losail and Jerez within the new tire rules,” says Jean-Philippe Weber, Michelin’s director of motorcycle racing. “Istanbul is going to be another big challenge. It will be much more difficult to fix the tire allocation for our different riders because we haven’t tested there, whereas we had tested at Losail and Jerez, so we had a lot of very recent data from those tracks. For the same reason it will be more difficult to explain our strategy to the teams, because we’ve not been able discuss any test results with them. From now on it’s more our responsibility to find the performance, so they have to trust us even more. But we are quite confident, because of what we have learned so far this year and because our tires worked very well last year at Istanbul. “A lot depends on the weather, so we will have to watch the weather forecasts carefully in the week before the race. From that we decide our strategy, produce a range of tires taking the forecast into account and then explain our strategy to the teams. The weather forecast is really important now. Last year we could be very reactive and send newly made tires to the track overnight during the weekend. With the new rules we obviously have to start production earlier and also because we now create specific tires for each rider, but our production facility is very flexible, so we don’t need to make our tires too long before the race. “We had a good race at Istanbul last year, taking the first five places, so that gives us a good starting point for this year. Last time there it was pretty cold. The track can be quite tricky in the rain, last year we saw quite a few guys slide off as they braked into Turn 12 during a wet practice session. Also, the rain doesn’t drain away too well. “Edge grip and traction are very important, especially through turns three, five and seven. And you need good braking stability into Turn 12. It’s going to be very interesting to see how our new 16-inch front behaves in Turkey because we’ve seen that Rossi and some of our other riders can be quite aggressive in the corners with this tire. The other big thing in Turkey will be engine power, there are some fast sections, and also at the next race in China!” MICHELIN IN TURKEY Michelin tires have been available in Turkey since 1936 and are currently imported by official subsidiary Michelin Lastikleri Ticaret AS. Turkey has a young population (40 per cent are under 22) and a rapidly expanding motorcycle market. TRACK DATA ISTANBUL PARK: 5.340km/3.318 miles Lap record: Toni Elias (Fortuna Honda RC211VMichelin), 1:52.877, 170.309kmh/105.825mph (2006, lap 21) Pole position 2006: Chris Vermeulen (Rizla Suzuki GSV-R), 2:04.617, 154.265Kmh/95.856mph (wet session) Winners of the Turkish GP 2006 Marco Melandri (Fortuna Honda RC211VMichelin), 41:54.065, 168.224kmh/104.530mph 2005 Marco Melandri (Telefonica Honda RC211VMichelin), 41:44.139 (first race at track) Michelin’s 2007 MotoGP riders Carlos Checa (Honda LCR RC212V-Michelin) Colin Edwards (Fiat Yamaha Team YZR-M1-Michelin) Nicky Hayden (Repsol Honda Team RC212V-Michelin) Shinya Nakano (Konica Minolta Honda RC212V-Michelin) Dani Pedrosa (Repsol Honda Team RC212V-Michelin) Kenny Roberts Jr (Team Roberts KR212V-Michelin) Valentino Rossi (Fiat Yamaha Team YZR-M1-Michelin)

Capcom®, a leading developer and publisher of videogames last week confirmed that it has secured the PlayStation® format rights to publish official videogames based on the adrenaline fuelled motor sport, MotoGP. The first game to be published under the terms of this agreement will be MotoGP ’07 (working title) due for release this autumn on the PlayStation® 2 entertainment system. MotoGP is the world’s premier motorcycling championship consisting of 18 Grands Prix from around the globe and featuring the world’s top motorcycle manufacturers including Honda, Yamaha, Suzuki, Ducati, Kawasaki, KTM and Aprilia plus the world’s best riders such as Nicky Hayden, Valentino Rossi, Dani Pedrosa, Makoto Tamada and Casey Stoner. Commenting on the announcement Mark Beaumont, executive vice president, officer and head of Capcom consumer software publishing in the Americas and Europe said: “MotoGP is the most exciting motor sport on the planet and we are really thrilled to be partnering with them. This project clearly demonstrates Capcom’s intent to broaden its portfolio to include both original and licensed IP, work with the best developer talent and brands from across the globe to create new exciting gaming experiences. MotoGP is a multi-million unit selling franchise on PlayStation formats and we look forward to taking it to the next level.” Carmelo Ezpeleta, CEO of Dorna Sports, the exclusive holder of all commercial and TV rights to MotoGP commented: “Capcom’s long tradition for innovation and pushing technological boundaries in pursuit of delivering high quality entertainment perfectly matches the core values of the MotoGP brand and we’re delighted to be partnering with them.”