Thursday, March 5, 2009

Scooter sound bites

As this weekend brings a close to the Daytona “Speed Weeks” marathon, with the running of the Daytona 200 Friday evening, live on SPEED, the event will run underneath the lights for the first time. Look for Miguel Duhamel to potentially win his record sixth Daytona 200 race, while James “bubbah” Stewart will look to resume his winning ways in Saturday’s Supercross event, having seen his streak of seven straight victories being snapped last weekend at Indianapolis’s Lucas Oil Dome...

Spies wins in Superbike debut Ben Spies, the reigning three time AMA Superbike Champion, whom after not getting the nod to move into MOTO GP full time this season, has elected to go World Superbike racing for Yamaha instead. Spies showed his potential by taking pole position for his very first heat race at Phillip Isle in Australia, but faltered to 16th place after running off track. In the second heat, spies was a bit more patient, running behind “Nitro” Noriyuki Haga on a Ducatti, who’d won the races first event, and is considered to be the favourite for the World Superbike title this season. Yet, Spies finally decided to flex his Yamaha R1’s muscle and passed “Haga” in the closing stages and then motored away from the Japanese rider and Italian Max Biaggi who took third place aboard his Aprilla, to win the races second heat and his very first World Superbike race...

Schuey injured in crash
Whale, it appears that seven times World Champion Michael Schumacher is human after all, since the F1 Superstar suffered apparent road rash in a recent “Scooter” accident south of the Border...

Schumacher injured in Motorcycle accident

New “Duc” unveiled
With the opening round of the 2009 MOTO GP season just around the corner, look for the “Kentucky Kid,” a.k.a. Nicky Hayden’s return to the forefront of action, now that he’s once again back on competitive equipment, having made the switch to Ducatti and becoming 2007 MOTO GP Champion Casey Stoner’s teammate, as Hayden who won the MOTO GP crown in 2006 along with Stoner will hope to pressure “The Doctor: and defeat reigning MOTO GP Champion Valentino Rossi this season...

New Ducatti unveiled

Stoner beats Massa
In the traditional Ferrari – Ducati winter team ski follies held at Madonna di Campiglio this past January, MOTO GP star Casey Stoner defeated Felipe Massa in a go kart race held on ice, while Nicky Hayden grabbed the final podium spot.

Kimi Raikkonen wasn’t present, as apparently the Finn had a touch of the flu? (Or simply too much Fizzy the evening before...) While Ferrari tester Marc Gene was at an abortive test session at Vairano, which saw the Scuderia offer Felipe’s younger brother Eduardo an opportunity to come and play in the snow.

Thus, by finishing third, Hayden bested Ducati test rider Vittoriano Guareschi, Luca Badoer and Eduardo Massa in the intra-squad karting race...