Kawasaki WSBK / WSS - Brno

[MadKaw]

Laconi And Tamada Set Their Sights On Points At Brno
Brno, Czech Republic, 19 July 2008
Régis Laconi and Makoto Tamada qualified 21st and 22nd on their Ninja ZX-10Rs today in the Czech Republic, after a challenging period of set-up and qualification. The Brno circuit, resurfaced this year, offered a strange combination of aggressive wear characteristics on tyres, but not as much grip as was expected, and thus neither rider was able to move up the order in qualifying.

Laconi ran off track on a couple of occasions today, and toppled over in the gravel, so he hopes to use morning warm-up to make progress before the races start.

Tamada made some late advances in pre-race testing, allowing him to try an alternative set-up in the morning warm-up for Sunday’s races.

Régis Laconi: “I have a lack of stability in the front end this weekend and I can’t push any harder than I have because I don’t have the confidence. We will check the data from the telemetry today to see what we change in the set-up to improve for tomorrow. I like this track so I am hoping for the best.”

Makoto Tamada: “For sure the situation today does not help our team morale, but the technicians are working as hard as they can to improve our position. Today we found one setting that allows me to achieve a higher speed in the corners. Tomorrow we will take full advantage of the time we have in warm-up to make sure we will be racing at our best.”

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Brno Practice Provides Supersport Riders With Close Competition
Brno, Czech Republic, 19 July 2008
GIL Kawasaki riders Chris Walker and Katsuaki Fujiwara completed the practice sessions at Brno in 21st and 23rd places respectively, leaving some work to do in the early laps of Sunday’s race. The practice session on Saturday was warmer than expected, and it stayed dry, despite the threat of rain clouds on the horizon at some stages of the afternoon.

Brno is always one of the most popular circuits on the WSS calendar, mainly due to its fabulous layout and location, plus the frequent changes of elevation, which put a premium on rider commitment and good front end grip.

On race settings each rider expects to make improvements for Sunday’s races, and get into points scoring positions.

Chris Walker: “We are about 1.8 seconds off pole position and that is about as close as we have been this year. We hit a bit of a wall yesterday but we got through that today. I can do the times consistently on my own, but I just can’t find that extra half a second. So I am hoping that the race pace will be a bit slower than in qualifying today and then we should be somewhere near. It’s a long old race and a long old lap, so there are plenty of places to pass. It’s going to be a bit of fun and a long race, just like at Misano.”

Katsuaki Fujiwara: “We needed to improve more today but it was difficult because of the overall balance of the machine. For the chassis and engine we just needed some more. I think we are losing half a second just on the final climb up the last hill. But the good news for us is that the people who can do one fast lap now probably can’t do them as consistently as we can do our best laps, so that will help us in the race.”

[MadKaw]

Superbike Riders Push Hard For Little Reward
Brno, Czech Republic, 20 July 2008
It proved impossible for Régis Laconi and Makoto Tamada to get into contention at the Brno circuit as Laconi fell twice and Tamada just failed to score points. Race One was an unhappy event for Regis, who tangled with local rider Jakub Smrz and crashed on lap four. Just out of the top 15 places and the promise of scoring was Makoto Tamada, who only went 16th in the race.

In race two, Laconi crashed on his own at high speed and hurt his wrist, although not seriously. Tamada had a slightly improved set-up in race two but simply found Brno a tough challenge on his machine today.

In the championship points table, Tamada is 17th and Laconi 18th, on an unchanged 41 and 36 points respectively.

The next round is at Brands Hatch, on Sunday 3 August.

Régis Laconi: “I saw a good improvement in the bike’s performance today but in race one I clashed with Smrz when he accidentally hit me and I fell. In race two I made a good start and reached 11th position on the first lap. A decent performance considering that I was starting from 21st position but unfortunately I pushed too much entering a curve and I lost control when I opened the gas just after the turn. It was a bad crash but without serious consequences, except for a slight pain in my wrist.”

Makoto Tamada: “We tried a lot of different settings on Friday and Saturday but I didn’t know which direction was better. Today we changed the rear linkage and suspension settings but the feeling was the same. We changed setting between the races and it was better, but not enough. I think that was the maximum I could do, and I was pushing and pushing but to get good race finish was very difficult. Maybe this track is just not so good for our bike because last year it was not easy for the riders here either.”

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Walker 11th On the Brno Final Rankings
Brno, Czech Republic, 20 July 2008
GIL Kawasaki rider Chris Walker recovered from a disappointing qualifying of 21st to finish a fighting 11th, while his team-mate Katsuaki Fujiwara just missed out on points by going 16th. Walker made a big push in the early laps but could not get into contention with the leading group, but he headed his particular mass of determined WSS riders over the line after another battling ride.

In the overall standings Walker is now 13th, on 36 points, while Fujiwara slots in 19th, on 12 points. Walker has scored points at every race except Monza, where another rider took him out.

Fujiwara's weekend also ended with him improving his qualifying performance in race conditions, as he got involved in a fight for the final points on offer.

Chris Walker: “I didn’t do my usual Stalker start because it kind of jumped and I had to shut off, so I got into a group of slower riders and couldn’t do any lap times until I had a clear track. I spent the whole race trying to catch the group in front, eventually caught Lascorz, then lost a lot of time and for the next few laps I was defending. It was fun to ride today but hard. And when you are riding that hard you have to be challenging for a top five. But it was a good result from 20th on the grid and we keep coming forward. There is always something good comes out of a race weekend, but obviously we would like to have more points.”

Katsuaki Fujiwara: “We made up many places today once the race got going. The chief engineer made a new setting and it was good, and for the future we can maybe use it more. Yesterday we were 23rd and today 16th. We had a bit of rear end chatter today, near the end, and I don’t know why. If you braked later and harder there was less chatter, but if you tried to go inside there was a lot of chatter, and that made the bike difficult to turn.”