motoGP Round 3 (Spoiler)

[ApriliaFox]

From Aprilia.com


WAITING FOR THE TECHINCAL INNOVATIONS

Two faces race for the Alice Aprilia Racing team bikes amongst 200.000 spanish fans. Colin Edwards qualified 14th because of some technical problems while Noriyuki Haga is 11th thanks to a good start and a steady race. Technical innovations for the Cube next Tuesday and Wednesday during the test session planned in Barcellona. The objective is to get to the top soon.

COLIN EDWARDS: “Today has been very hard: the electronic control of engine braking was not working in the right way so I have been forced to use the rear brake. I was less powerful than the others so I was unable to do it better. I just finished the race to get some useful points”. più. Sono arrivato in fondo per portare a casa qualche punto”.

NORIYUKI HAGA: “I started from the 5th row maintaining the tenth position for a long time during the race. Through this good start I was able to overtake many riders. Then the bike became faster but since the half of the race the rear started to slip to much obstructing my recover to the top”.

GIGI DALL’IGNA (Project Leader): “Unfortunately we had a problem on Edwards‘ bike: because of an electronic trouble the bike did not work in the braking and Colin did all his best to finish the race somehow. Now we are going to check all the data to discover what happened on bike no. 45. In fact Haga did not suffer this trouble. We planned a test session in Barcellona on Tuesday and Wednesday: I think this is a good chance to improve the bike for the next GP and to test the new parts. New engine parts to test for the achievement of more power. The fairing will be the same but the rear and the fuel tank will be changed.

Race classification
1 Rossi (Honda)
2 Biaggi (Honda)
3 Bayliss (Ducati)
4 Ukawa (Honda)
11 Haga (Aprilia)
14 Edwards (Aprilia)

CONSTRUCTORS STANDING
1 Honda 75
2 Ducati 45
3 Yamaha 30
4 Aprilia 15
5 Suzuki 15
6 Proton 11
7 Kawasaki 1

[throttle junkie]

i really cant see anybody regulary catching the honda bikes, except maybe the ducatis later in the year...

dissapointing day for the aprilia boys again, but things will get better, just remember how much money Honda have available for development compared to others!!

[Cannon Fodder MOO]

I was impressed by Baylis, Ducati on the podium again

[davenet]

Sal,

Was Tamada riding on BT012's ??

He was doing pretty good in the second group holding his on until half way.

[Smoke Eater 41]

Apparently, they use the Mille rear brake on the Cube.

[iiph]

IMO cube is a total disgrace , i wonder how much it cost to built a triple from scratch with its F1 technology plus hire CE , it never finished well last year , now aprilia says its improved with 230HP (admitted , its very fast according to CE) but even aokis slow proton finished ahead of haga ..

[dowzerr]

this track suited the 2 stroke, its all about corner speed. The first 3 250s lapped quicker than McCoy on the Kawasaki, now thats a crap bike.

[ApriliaFox]

The Aprilias would not be looking that bad if it was wasnt for Ducati being so damn spectacular! 2 Podiums in 3 races in their debut season!!

And we know Colin is as good a rider as Troy so it aint the rider ... its the bike!

They should have taken an Aprilia 250 and stuck a Mille engine in it ...! At least we know it would be fast and handle.....!

[doc wat]

Or even a RS1000 2stroke!, now that WOULD be make a change from all those bloody Honda's.

[iiph]

Cube put out 2x more power than Mille and a lot lighter too , we cant even imagine how fast they are ..

honda and ducati just have lot more exprience on these type of bikes , aprilia is first time getting involoved in these so it takes time , gamble huge amount of $ never go on podium

[parkec]

Saw a report somewhere that 2003 is suppose/expected to be a fine tuning/development year in prep for the 2004.

But as a loyal Tampa Bay Devil Rays Ray fan, development year is buzz for "we suck but hope to be better NEXT year".

On the the other hand Edwards and his crew are pushing hard tweaking the bike.