Copyright 2004, Roadracing World Publishing, Inc.

Aaron Gobert won two CCS sprint races September 25-26 while testing changes to his Graves Yamaha YZF-R1 Superstock bike at the site of the AMA season finale, Virginia International Raceway (VIR).

“(Jamie) Hacking didn’t get to do the (team) test (in early-August), so he hadn’t ridden a 1000 there and wanted to come. So if you bring one guy you have to bring everybody, you know,” said Gobert, when asked about the origin of the test, which was attended by Gobert, Hacking, Jason DiSalvo but not Damon Buckmaster.

While Hacking and DiSalvo pitted during the CCS races to make changes, Gobert made every hot lap he could and ended up winning the GTO solo endurance event, which he holeshotted from the fifth row, and the Unlimited Grand Prix, without serious challenge.

The young Australian didn’t claim the wins, however, saying, “We told them to disqualify us. We told them don’t give us points and don’t give us prize money. We didn’t want to interfere with the points and prize money for the guys who are working hard to get there, you know? One guy told me he spent all day Friday fitting tires at some other ride day to be able to afford to come to the race. It makes you feel bad if you go there and take all their money and points and that kind of stuff. It was track time. That’s all it was, really.”

And it was valuable track time, according to Gobert, “It was a good day. I got a lot out of it. I got my bike feeling 100 times better than what it felt at the test, the front end feel. I had a completely different fork spec than DiSalvo and Hacking and, I think, Buckmaster, as well. As soon as I went to their set-up, it was just an incredible difference. I’m looking forward to coming back here for the AMA race now.”

As for Gobert’s wedding, which was originally planned for October 6 in Australia – after the postponed AMA season finale September 17-19 at VIR, Gobert has changed his wedding plans in favor of defending his AMA Superstock Championship points lead at the re-scheduled AMA season-ender October 9-10. Gobert is now planning to marry his longtime girlfriend Melanie Riley over Halloween weekend in Sydney, Australia.

Copyright 2004, Roadracing World Publishing, Inc.

Racers Tiffanie Ragasa and Stephen Bowline were married September 20, in Muir Beach, California.

From a press release issued by Shani Cobb:

With 107 entries, the final round in SEMRA’s seven round mini road racing series saw the crowning of six class champions and the overall points champion, Ted “Cannonball” Cobb. Winning six of the seven rounds in the GP85 class, Cobb took home the $1000 cash purse.

“I had some good competition against Brian Livengood and up and comer 10 year old Miles Thornton all season,” said Ted Cobb. “Those guys made me work for it, we had a blast!”

More information can be found at, www.SEMRA.org

From a press release issued by Galouises Fortuna Yamaha:

GAULOISES FORTUNA YAMAHA TEAM PREVIEW

Qatar Grand Prix
Losail, Qatar
September 30, October 1 & 2, 2004

MOTOGP VENTURES EAST TO ALL-NEW VENUE

Gauloises Fortuna Yamaha Team riders Valentino Rossi and Carlos Checa face the prospect of four races in five weekends in their final push towards the end of an extraordinary MotoGP season. The opening section of the final quartet takes place at the all-new Losail International circuit on the outskirts of Doha in Qatar, the first time that a MotoGP race has taken place in the Middle East.

With a 39-point lead over his closest challenger Sete Gibernau (Honda) and a maximum of 100 points available from now to the season-ending race at Valencia on 31st October Rossi is in an enviable position, having taken to his Yamaha M1 with no small degree of success. The five-time World Champion has taken six race wins so far in 2004, a full 50% of all races, making this the most remarkable Yamaha season since the early nineties. His second place at the last MotoGP round in Motegi, Japan, was his 98th podium finish in the three different classes of Grand Prix racing. This puts Rossi in the top seven riders of all time to stand most frequently on a Grand Prix podium. Rossi is now about to face an all-new challenge at Losail – a track no MotoGP rider has any experience of, other than a walk around the track layout.

Rossi’s team-mate Carlos Checa, a 31-year-old Spanish-born London resident, will be going for his first win of the year in Qatar. Having experienced both highs and lows this year, Checa’s grinding determination has brought him to his current seventh place in the championship standings, with realistic ambitions of finishing within the top four before the season end.

ROSSI UP TO THE QATAR CHALLENGE

The combination of Rossi, his YZR-M1 and the expert support from the Gauloises Fortuna Yamaha Team has not only taken six wins this year, but also four pole positions and the lead in the BMW award, for the rider with the best combined time in all of the season’s qualifying practices. For Rossi however, the new track is just another challenge his peerless talent has to match up to and master.

With vast experience of winning championships, Rossi knows that last weekend’s second place at Motegi was an important result, especially as his main rivals all found Motegi a difficult nut to crack, another vindication of an overall championship challenge. “The bike was working really well in Motegi. There were problems with it sliding towards the end of the race and I thought it was better to hold on to second place and valuable points than to push any harder and risk falling. Anyway Tamada was so strong that I don’t think it was possible to beat him. We need to continue the same level of work for the rest of the season, remain concentrated and pull off good results for the remaining four races.”

The Losail circuit, just outside the Qatari capital of Doha, is already piquing Rossi’s imagination. “I’ve been looking forward to Qatar and waiting for a chance like this for a long time,” said Rossi. “It’s such a long time since we went to a new track, at least one that’s new to everyone. It will be the chance to see who is really the best rider, as we will be making new lines on a new surface. It’s going to be so hot, and it will be hard to make it through the whole race in such conditions.”

Rossi has seen the new MotoGP venue first hand, and came away impressed with the job at hand. “I have already visited the Losail circuit for the foundation ceremony in December,” affirmed Rossi. “It seems like a really good place, and I hope it will be a good competition. I really hope a lot of people come to watch us. In a way it’s like every other race for us because we’re setting the M1 up at new circuits all the time this year. We seem to be good at getting the best out of it in limited time. I think there are something like 15 corners at the Qatar circuit, more than almost any other, so that should be interesting.”

CHECA ANTICIPATES A WARM WELCOME

The punishing temperatures expected at Qatar have filled some MotoGP riders with trepidation – the prospect of a full duration MotoGP event in the heat of an Arabian desert. Not so the super-fit Checa. “The hot weather won’t be a big problem for me, it’s normally the same in Malaysia,” stated the Catalan rider.

Checa also feels that the unknown nature of the circuit will help the more experienced riders, himself among them. “A surprise is always nice. The pressure at Losail could come from the track itself, or other unexpected problems at a new venue. Many people say that the track could be slippery or dirty and it will be very hot. But I think it’s always nice to go to a new place. I normally like to go to new circuits.”

DAVIDE BRIVIO – TEAM DIRECTOR

Heading up a talented group of engineers and administrative staff in the Gauloises Fortuna Yamaha Team, Davide Brivio has seen the remarkable progress of Rossi first hand, but he knows that Losail will present one of the more unique challenges the team has faced in 2004. “Qatar will be very difficult; it will also be very hot,” nods Brivio. “Looking at the map of the circuit it has a lot of corners, a lot of different types of corners, and that provides us with many challenges. But it also makes life more interesting for everyone involved.”

Brivio continued, “I think it will be hard for the riders and for everybody to work on something new and see how things will go at an absolutely brand new track – which bike, rider and tyre will adjust to the circuit best. We are going there with 39 points advantage but these last four races will be very important. We need to ‘manage’ this advantage, for Valentino to be on the podium in each of the races to achieve our final goal. For Carlos, Losail can be a good track and he is very fit, a factor which will help him a lot. In the last races, for whatever reason it has not been so good for Carlos, so Losail offers him the opportunity to have better results.”

TECHNICALLY SPEAKING

The Losail circuit will boast the most cutting-edge facilities ever enjoyed by MotoGP but the track itself is the only part that will make any impact on the result of the race and the overall championship battle.

At 5.4km Losail is of a greater length than most MotoGP venues, and certainly few existing tracks feature quite so many corners, and in such endless varieties. To their eternal credit the track designers have eschewed the adoption of rhythm-disrupting chicanes, yet have managed to make the layout of the circuit fascinating on paper. Several high-speed corners, plus two tighter hairpins, make Losail a circuit of contrasts. Six left and ten right hand corners are laid on top of a largely flat surface, removing at least one complication to the machine’s set-up.

The true nature of Losail will only reveal itself during the first practice sessions, but the relatively fast corners that abound around the track will require stability from chassis and suspension set-up. The fact that the track will demand an almost constant alteration of machine direction and lean angle adds another requirement – agility when flicking from side-to-side.

The last corner and the first, both right handers, will be preceded by exceptionally heavy braking, but these are expected to be the only places at which such severe braking forces will be generated.

VALENTINO ROSSI: INFORMATION
Age: 25
Lives: London, UK
Bike: Gauloises Fortuna Yamaha Team YZR-M1
GP victories: 65 (26 X MotoGP, 13 X 500cc, 14 X 250cc, 12 X 125cc)
First GP victory: Czech Republic, 1996 (125cc)
First GP: Malaysia, 1996 (125cc)
GP starts: 136 (44 x MotoGP, 32 x 500cc, 30 x 250cc, 30 x 125cc)
Pole positions: 34


CARLOS CHECA: INFORMATION
Age: 31
Lives: London, UK
Bike: Gauloises Fortuna Yamaha Team YZR-M1
GP victories: 2 (500cc)
First GP victory: Catalunya, 1996 (500cc)
First GP: Europe, 1993 (125cc)
GP starts: 164 (44 x MotoGP, 92 x 500cc, 27 x 250cc, 1 x 125cc)
Pole positions: 2 (1 x MotoGP, 1 x 500cc)
First pole: Spain, 1998 (500cc)

From a press release issued by Dorna Sports:

MotoGP set for Middle East debut at Marlboro Grand Prix of Qatar

The MotoGP World Championship heads to the Middle East for the first time in its 55-year history this weekend for the inaugural Marlboro Grand Prix of Qatar. The fabulous Losail International Circuit, purpose-built on the outskirts of the capital city of Doha, has been constructed in little over a year but after an investment of some $58 million USD and round-the-clock dedication of up to 1,000 workers it is ready to host the thirteenth round of the world’s premier motorcycle racing series.

The track itself is a flowing layout of 5.4 kilometres, featuring a main straight of 1100 metres, surrounded by artificial grass designed to prevent sand from the neighbouring desert from blowing onto the circuit. Only one man has completed a lap of the track on a MotoGP machine, former 500cc racer Randy Mamola riding the two-seat Ducati Desmosedici at the opening ceremony in July, meaning it will be a completely new challenge for the riders and an interesting sub-plot to the World Championship title chase.

Valentino Rossi remains in pole position to retain his crown after extending his points advantage at the top of the standings in each of the last two rounds. Victory and second place respectively in Portugal and Japan, complimented by fourth and sixth for Sete Gibernau and two crashes for Max Biaggi, have seen Rossi establish a 39-point cushion with just four rounds remaining.

However, the unpredictability of MotoGP racing was never better illustrated than in the last round at Motegi, where Biaggi was one of six riders to go down in a first-corner pile-up caused by Loris Capirossi. Whilst Biaggi escaped uninjured, as did Colin Edwards and Nicky Hayden, Capirossi broke two bones in his foot, John Hopkins snapped several ribs and Kenny Roberts dislocated his elbow.

This weekend both Capirossi and Hopkins have promised to ride through the pain barrier and compete at Qatar whilst Roberts has been ruled out for the next three races and will be replaced at Suzuki this weekend by Yukio Kagayama. Roberts’ younger brother Kurtis is also out of action, missing his third race since fracturing his left elbow and wrist in a practice crash at Brno five weeks ago, and will be replaced at Proton Team KR by James Haydon.

Kagayama and Haydon will be joined on the grid by fellow British Superbike regular James Ellison, who rides in place of the departed Michel Fabrizio at WCM. Fabrizio, meanwhile, could get a late call-up from Aprilia as a replacement for Shane Byrne, who has been ruled out for the remainder of the season after further tests on his injured wrist following a painful return to action at Motegi revealed ligament and tendon damage. Fabrizio previously rode as a substitute for Byrne at Estoril.

One rider who will find himself in a common situation this weekend despite the unfamiliarity of the surroundings is Dani Pedrosa. The Spaniard has tackled each of the twelve circuits so far this season for the first time on a 250cc machine and had excelled at almost all of them, picking up ten podiums including five victories to open up an advantage of 47 points over Randy de Puniet at the top of the championship. Further victories in the next two races would secure the title for Pedrosa in Malaysia, where he was already crowned 125cc World Champion just one year ago.

The man looking to inherit Pedrosa’s 125cc crown, Andrea Dovizioso, faces a virtually identical challenge as he defends a 45-point advantage at the top of the championship. Like Pedrosa, Dovizioso has led the series since the opening round in South Africa and has benefited from the inconsistency of his main rivals, never less than in the previous round at Motegi when second-placed Roberto Locatelli crashed on the last lap and Hector Barberá, who lies third, retired with a mechanical problem.



More, from a press release issued by Camel Honda:

Qatar GP – MotoGP

MotoGP MAKES ITS MIDDLE EASTERN DEBUT

The Camel Honda team and the entire MotoGP circus will be involved in an historic event this coming Saturday, the first motorcycle Grand Prix in the Middle East. The race will take place on an entirely new track, opened barely two months ago, and of which only its layout is known. There is a very long straight (1,068 metres), 16 bends with ten right-handers and six to the left, and at 5,380 metres in total, it is amongst the longest tracks on the whole calendar (fourth behind Assen, Sepang and Brno respectively). It will be a real challenge for riders and engineers therefore besides dealing with the intense heat and the unknown grip levels of the track. However both of the Camel Honda team riders remain calm, with Max Biaggi always a fan of the hot weather and also a specialist on new circuits to the championships (Welkom 1999 as an example), whilst Makoto Tamada has an advantage in the fact that everyone will be new to the track and event.

Sito Pons – Camel Honda (Team Principal)
“The team come here on the back of a winning Grand Prix, with Makoto, but also agonising after an unfortunate and unavoidable retirement from Max after a first corner incident during the Motegi GP. We will be aiming for a top result with both riders in Qatar, it’s a new track for everybody and so it will be particularly challenging. It will probably be very hot, which will put the tyres under pressure, and we’ll need to get the set-up right on the bike fairly quickly. Due to this, the intense work done by the mechanics, engineers, riders and tyre technicians will be paramount. ours is a squad that has proved it can win on several occasions, so I am hoping for that kind of result again in Qatar.”

Max Biaggi #3: (Michelin tyres)
“I really like the idea of this race, because it reminds me a bit of the beginning of my career, when everything was new to me, and I had to learn a track in just a couple of days of practice. Besides, I enjoy riding in extremely difficult weather conditions, where the heat doesn’t bother me too much. So I’m hoping to do a good race, if nothing else to make up for the misfortune at Estoril and Motegi. This year I had been scoring regularly but to get two zeros in a row have made the championship difficult. That’s what is most disappointing, and also the fact that on both occasions my team and I, along with the Honda technicians, managed to do some fantastic work during practice and the bike was really going well. So because of that I want to at least get the satisfaction of getting some good results in race by race.”

Giulio Bernardelle – Camel Honda (Technical Director for Makoto Tamada)
“Qatar is completely new for everybody, but we will go there with the same spirit and the same calm we take to every race. Analysing the track it seems like it could be similar to the tracks at Motegi and Sepang and that would be great for us considering that in Japan Makoto won, whilst in Malaysia during the winter tests, he was very quick. We just need to find out what the asphalt is like: the only thing we know is that it will be hot, whilst we don’t know how good grip will be. Seeing as it is right in the desert it’s normal to expect there to be sand, but we’ll have to see. Whatever the case our tyres have made a big jump forwards in quality in this second half of the season, so we are both confident and relaxed.”

Makoto Tamada #6: (Bridgestone tyres)
“Winning in Motegi, in front of my friends and compatriots, was honestly fantastic, a great emotion that I won’t ever forget, but now we have to concentrate on the next race. Qatar is a track that no team knows of course and none of the tyre manufacturers either. This means that the rider’s talent will be even more important than normal and that’s why I can see myself fighting for the podium at the end of this race. I’ve seen the track plan and the design looks simple, without too much technical difficulties. It will be better to ride it though before saying too much. Let’s say that it shouldn’t be too tough to learn, but that we will only know how to act once we get the wheels on the track, but I’m very confident and feeling strong.”

From a press release issued by Motonation, the U.S. Sidi boot importer:

Chris Vermeulen signs with Sidi boots!

Yep, the hottest rider in World Superbike in 2005 with the world at his feet as he decides if he will stay in World Superbike or step up to Moto GP has made one decision which really was not that hard…Chris Vermeulen has signed a long term agreement to wear Sidi boots!

Chris stated; “I have admired Sidi for years, the product and the way they fully support the riders they work with. I really wanted to be one of the lucky few top riders who have a chance to work with Sidi, now that I’m here I’m here to stay!”

Needless to say the feeling is mutual.

From a press release issued by AMA Pro Racing:

Chris Carr: 2004 AMA Progressive Insurance Flat Track Champion

Veteran wins sixth AMA Grand National Championship during 50th anniversary season

PICKERINGTON, Ohio (Sept. 27, 2004) — Chris Carr wrapped up his sixth AMA Grand National Championship Friday night by simply qualifying for the Du Quoin (Ill.) Short Track. Carr, 37, of Fleetwood, Pa., had built up a large enough lead in the series standings that he needed only to qualify for the short track portion of the Du Quoin doubleheader finale to clinch his fourth-straight title. Carr’s championship was made even more special considering he won the title during the 50th anniversary of the AMA Grand National Championship.

Carr becomes only the third rider in the history of AMA Grand National Championship to win four consecutive titles. Motorcycle Hall of Famers Carroll Resweber and Scott Parker are the other two champs to win four in a row.

“It means a lot to me to reach the benchmark that Carroll Resweber set all those years ago,” Carr said. “He set the standard that everyone was shooting for. When Scotty Parker was chasing his record of four straight there was a lot of emphasis on that and now I’ve been able to reach that goal and get to enjoy the feeling of reaching one of the remarkable records in AMA racing.”

Carr led the 2004 championship from the second round in San Francisco on May 1, all the way through to the season finale. Former champ Joe Kopp finished runner-up to Carr in the final standings and Ken Coolbeth was third. Carr’s six national wins made him the wins leader in a season that saw nine different winners in the 17 rounds. He rode Harley-Davidson, Rotax and KTM brands of motorcycles during the season all sponsored by Quality Checked Certified Pre-Owned Ford. His bikes were prepared by famed crew chief Kenny Tolbert.

Carr said he knew the championship was his to win fairly early in the season. “We had five different types of races in the first five rounds,” he said. “When I came out of that with the series lead I knew we had a good shot at winning another championship. It was just a matter of keeping the momentum going through the rest of the season.”

Carr took wins in San Francisco, Florence, Ky., Oak Ridge, Tenn., Farley, Iowa, Springfield, Ill., and Columbus, Ohio. He won three half-miles, two short racks and one mile race. His six wins this year pushed his career AMA Grand National win total to 68 – second on the all-time list to Scott Parker’s 94 wins. Carr’s three half-mile wins moved him past Jay Springsteen for third on the all-time half-mile national wins list. Carr leads the short track and TT categories and is fourth in all-time wins on the miles.

After winning the 2004 championship Carr hopes to come back to defend his title next year. In 2005 he will be shooting to win a fifth-straight title, which would tie Scott Parker’s record of five-straight AMA Grand National Championships.

“My goal next year is to win the championship,” Carr explained. “Where that leads me as far as records are concerned is secondary. If I win the championship any marks I set in the record books is simply a bonus.”