Just like a month ago, rain once again hampered Casey Stoner’s second test for Honda. The former two-time world champion returned to Motegi for another two-day (Wednesday and Thursday) development test.
In his last test, that was also hindered by rain on the first day, the Australian tested RC213V that Dani Pedrosa and Marc Marquez currently ride.
If the weather at Motegi takes a turn for the better, Stoner is scheduled to finally begin testing Honda’s new production racer, the RCV1000R, that has already been bought by Fausto Gresini for Scott Redding to debut on next season and that Cardion AB has decided to field for Karel Abraham.
In the aftermath of every major race, we present you with a special photo gallery dedicated to the most cheerful paddock girls spotted at the venue, but last weekend we had two major events to look after: the MotoGP race in Silverstone and the WSBK round at the Nurburgring. As for the former, we published a cool gallery filled with gorgeous English roses just yesterday, so now it is the turn of some German beauties, and we have no less than 45 pictures for you to enjoy.
The Nurbugring round of the 2013 World Superbike Championship will probably be remembered by the fans because of a few reasons: it is quite likely the last WSBK event held at the famous German race-track (rumor has it it will be replaced with the Sachsenring starting next year because of the financial struggles of the local prometers), it had both races cut short by the red flags and saw the terrible accident that will probably sideline Jonathan Rea (Honda Worls Superbike) for a few months.
Italy’s Marco Melandri (BMW Motorrad GoldBet SBK) wasn’t too happy either: he brought home two second places, but he seemed in a great form and ready to fight for the win in both races: too bad the red flags prevented him from trying his luck in the last laps, as he really wanted to exploit the momentum and score all the points he could to rekindle his hopes to win the Championship. Well, we do know he’s got a nice fiancee to look after him, so he probably didn’t need much help from the the always lovely German ladies to cheer him up.
Official highlights from the final two rounds of the 2013 Husqvarna ACU British Sprint Enduro Championship at Chacombe, near Banbury.
The final two rounds of the Husqvarna ACU British Sprint Enduro Championship, rounds seven and eight, at Chacombe saw the crowning of all of this year's champions. With the series moving to a new venue, the season finale would see competitors tested with a fast and flowing course. Greeted with the last of the summer sun, the added heat ensured riders would have no easy run to the finish line.
Loris Baz was forced to miss the Nurburgring round after crashing in warm-up practice. The 20-year old Kawasaki rider was sent to the hospital to undergo medical exams on a suspected vertebra injury.
Initially Baz tweeted that he had two cracked vertebra, but that was later ruled, but doctors in Spain did find an old T4 fracture that he didn’t know about.
Baz is currently recovering from his crash and hopes he will get the okay to race in the first ever World Superbike round that will be held in Istanbul on September 15th, which replaced the Brno round.
“First of all I want to say thank you to all my family, friends and fans for the messages of support. I appreciate them a lot. I feel better now only a few days after the crash but I am still in some pain. We should have more news about my recovery at the beginning of next week when I see more specialists, so we will see what they say. But in general it is better than they thought right after the accident, which is really good.
My father drove me home on Monday, then we went to Spain to see some specialists and now I am back home in France again. I tried to keep everybody up to date on Facebook and Twitter, but there were a lot of changes and developments on the medical side so it was not that easy to know what to tell people all the time.
Most importantly things are better than we thought. Right now we are looking at a physiotherapy regime to be put in place. If everything works out as it should I will go to Turkey and try to race because my back feels much better than it did on Sunday. I want to say thanks to all the medial teams in Germany, Barcelona and now France. Also a big thanks to my team - they have been really close to me and that is very important right now.”
