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Valentino Rossi autobiography
This 288 page book goes into details of life of Valentino Rossi, one of the best MotoGP racers ever. Autobiography provides inside details of both on-track and off-track life of living motorcycle legend, allowing reader to get better understanding of life and achievement of Valentino Rossi.
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2007-10-12 Stoner dominates day 1 at Phillip Island - rider claims
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 Phillip Island greeted the MotoGP paddock with a full spectrum of unstable conditions today, as the weather switched back and forth between heavy rain and bright sunshine. Temperatures remained cool throughout the day thanks to a cold wind off the Bass Straight and it was a delicate day of set-up work for the MotoGP teams. Casey Stoner was once again fastest in both free practice sessions, despite crash that he suffered at the end of the session, and despite not improving his best time from FP1. Marco Melandri set second best time, in front of Dani Pedrosa in 3rd place.
Casey Stoner - 1st - 1:31.132:
This afternoon we had more dry laps than this morning, but it started to rain a couple of times, so it was on and off and off on, just frustrating really. The wind makes it a little bit of a handful round here, but we were able to be fastest, with three laps from race distance on the tyres, so we are quite happy with the bike setting and the tyres. I think I still could've gone faster at the end but unfortunately the rear end came around on me as I was tipping into the Honda hairpin, it just slid away. We're not really sure what happened, I think there must've been something on the circuit, we might go and check it out a bit later. We've still got a harder compound rear to test tomorrow and we've also got a different fairing - to make the bike more stable in windy conditions - which we're going to try. We've tested it a few times, though temperature is an issue, so first we have to make sure that conditions are cold enough and I think they are, so that might give us a bit of an advantage.
Dani Pedrosa - 3rd:
The conditions for practice today were changing all the time, from wet to dry and back again so quickly. It was also extremely windy - especially in the afternoon - and this made it really difficult to get consistent lap times going. I hope it's more stable for the race on Sunday otherwise it could really be chaos out there. Today we mainly took the chance to test tyres and we were able to learn a certain amount for the conditions and temperatures we encountered. With the wind though it was very difficult to fully commit and it was always necessary to ride with something in reserve. Still the pace is not too bad and there's room for improvement ahead of qualifying tomorrow. We'll just have to see what the weather throws at us.
Marco Melandri - 2nd:
I’m quite happy with this first day. The characteristics of this circuit are more suited to our bike and my riding style. There are no real heavy braking areas – you have to be smooth with the bike, and I like that. The bike is manageable and is working well. I’ve got a good feeling with it in the wet and the dry but we have to improve because I’m sure the race pace will increase tomorrow. I’m confident but I just hope the weather stabilises a little because it was really tough to ride today. The wind was really strong and the conditions changed from corner to corner.
Valentino Rossi - 4th:
The Weather today was unbelievable and the track went from wet to dry four or five times, which made it very difficult to understand. The conditions definitely weren’t the best, especially because it was very, very cold. Despite this it was not a bad day; we worked well, tried several different settings and found some good tyre possibilities to keep going with tomorrow. In fact we tried quite a lot of tyres, wet and dry, and our level for the first day in this respect is not so bad, although we will be in better shape if we have a little bit more temperature. At the end we are fourth but it’s okay, especially considering that we have a few problems still to deal with, including not enough weight on the front which means I’m not yet fast enough in the long corners. We have some ideas about how to improve on things for tomorrow. I love this track a lot and it’s always a great feeling to ride here and with the 800 it is no different. Of course today it wasn’t the best conditions to be riding in or to fully enjoy the track, but hopefully tomorrow will be better.
Randy de Puniet - 5th:
I rode about 15 consecutive laps on the same rear tyre this afternoon and my times were pretty good. I'm in fifth position at the moment, which isn't bad but, with a new tyre, I feel I could improve by half a second straight away. The bike's feeling good. Today, we worked mostly on tyre choice because we never know what the conditions are going to be like here, which makes things quite difficult. However, if tomorrow is wet for qualifying, then we'll be prepared whatever the weather does on Sunday. We had a bit of movement in the rear tyre today but nothing too bad; every year we have this problem but we all have to deal with the same thing. The chassis feels okay: we tried some different settings, and I'm happy with it, but still, tomorrow we can improve the bike and the lap times, I'm sure.
Alex Barros - 6th:
Today was a difficult one. Because of the meteorological conditions, I wasn't able to ride many laps in the dry during the morning session, and also in the afternoon I wasn't able to get in many dry laps, because we ran into a few problems and the track conditions were changing so rapidly. During the last six minutes of the Free Practice, we were very productive, and I took sixth position and had a good race pace going. On my last lap, I was going really well, but I went straight in a braking area otherwise I think I could have improved my time even more, if not for that mistake. For tomorrow, I hope to improve, and I especially hope that the wind dies down, because it made things so difficult today.
Loris Capirossi - 8th:
It has been a strange day, it seems like we came in and out of the garage a hundred times because it started raining and then the track dried and then it started raining again... and all this makes our work a bit more difficult. But I have to say I'm happy, we are going pretty well. We had just had one problem today - we thought we had two soft compound rear tyres for the day but in fact we only had one, so this afternoon I had to continue with the same tyre I used this morning. That makes me think we can go a lot better tomorrow. I'm happy with the work we've done so far, I love this track and we come into this race off a good race in Japan, so I really think we can have a good result here too.
Anthony West - 10th:
We had some problems with the tyre spinning but I think it was just the cold track and there wasn't much we could do about that. Then we had that rain in the middle of the last session, as well as the rain this morning, so we've lost a bit of time to perfect our set up for the race, but I'm feeling good so far. Also, I've been taking it fairly steady, not pushing it 100 per cent yet, so I'm comfortable with times we're doing, considering I'm not on the limit. The wind's blowing us around on track quite a bit, so it's hard to judge the set up sometimes, but yeah, we're doing okay!
John Hopkins - 12th:
Well as far as today went the conditions were pretty horrible so it was a case of going out and trying to make the best of the situation! This morning was off and on with the wet then drying conditions and we didn’t get a lot done in that session. This afternoon was similar, but we managed to get a little bit more work done. The wind was horrendous and trying to set-up the bike and find a good tyre was pretty difficult. We are nowhere near close to a good set-up and we still have a lot of work to do and we are already thinking about Saturday and seeing what the conditions will do. I think we will make a lot of changes tomorrow and work hard with Bridgestone to make the best solution for Sunday!
Chaz Davies - 13th:
The first session I started off by taking it easy because the track conditions were tricky and I wanted to take things step by step. As the day went on we introduced different modifications to the bike, and in the afternoon I was able to get a better feeling with the Ducati. At the end of the afternoon session I had a harmless crash that I think was caused by some oil on the track, or something similar, because 10 seconds later Stoner crashed in the same place, in the same way, and he made the same comments. Tomorrow, I hope to improve my laptimes and get a good spot on the grid to start from.
Chris Vermeulen - 14th:
It was difficult day for everybody with those weather conditions. It’s typical Phillip Island where it can be raining, dry, windy and very warm all in a short space of time. It made it hard to get the bike set-up and get a good feeling, but my guys have done a great job and made things very comfortable for me. We have improved the bike with every dry bit of track-time we’ve had and have a clear direction of which way to go. The wind has been the most difficult thing today and it seemed to affect me a lot out there, so we will need to work on improving things to counter that tomorrow.
Colin Edwards - 15th:
Today was not the day I had hoped for starting out at Phillip Island. The bike was most definitely riding me for most of today and not the other way around! To be honest I was just holding on for most of the time and trying to survive and, try as we might, we couldn’t seem to get to a decent base setting. The bike felt pretty nervous and twitchy and we’re definitely going to have to change a few things to get it working. Obviously Valentino's doing a lot better with the same bike so we need to look at what he’s doing to see if it can help us. We didn’t even really get to a stage today where we could gauge how good the tyres were so we’ve really got some work to do tonight. I’m disappointed because I’m always so excited to come here; it’s one of my favourite tracks and I haven’t ridden one good lap today. Anyway, we’ll have a big meeting tonight, look at the data and I have every faith that my guys will be able to turn things around as usual.
Toni Elias - 17th:
It’s been a tough day – the weather was a lottery – one minute rain, then sun, then raining again. The track dries quickly because of the wind but it’s not the same all over. Unfortunately this didn’t help us set the bike up and I was struggling to get weight onto the front and get enough heat into the rear tyre. I’m not happy and I’m hoping for better weather tomorrow in order to improve.
Free practice times - Phillip Island day 1
1 Casey Stoner Ducati AUS 1:31.132
2 Marco Melandri Honda ITA 1:31.555
3 Daniel Pedrosa Honda ESP 1:31.802
4 Valentino Rossi Yamaha ITA 1:31.934
5 Randy De Puniet Kawasaki FRA 1:31.996
6 Alex Barros Ducati BRA 1:32.164
7 Carlos Checa Honda ESP 1:32.182
8 Loris Capirossi Ducati ITA 1:32.203
9 Nicky Hayden Honda USA 1:32.316
10 Anthony West Kawasaki AUS 1:32.459
11 John Hopkins Suzuki USA 1:33.274
12 Shinya Nakano Honda JPN 1:33.838
13 Chaz Davies Ducati GBR 1:33.910
14 Chris Vermeulen Suzuki AUS 1:33.945
15 Colin Edwards Yamaha USA 1:33.965
16 Sylvain Guintoli Yamaha FRA 1:33.991
18 Makoto Tamada Yamaha JPN 1:35.177
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Casey Stoner 2010 Ducati
Diecast model of the 2010 Ducati Desmosedici GP10 of Casey Stoner. This 1:10 model is a valuable piece of MotoGP history, being the bike Stoner last ridden before his switch to Honda.
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