ROSSI CLOSES THE GAP WITH ANOTHER HARD-EARNED PODIUM
 Camel
Yamaha Team rider Valentino Rossi now trails MotoGP World
Championship series leader Nicky Hayden (Honda) by just twelve
points with two rounds remaining thanks to his fourth consecutive
podium, his eighth from the last ten races, in Japan today.
Rossi took second place in a race dominated and won by Loris
Capirossi (Ducati), with Marco Melandri (Honda) completing
the podium in a carbon copy of the front row order. The 20-point
reward for Rossi moved him another nine closer to Hayden,
who finished fifth behind Sete Gibernau (Ducati).
Colin Edwards had shown promise of mounting a podium challenge
himself this weekend but unfortunately his excellent practice
pace on race rubber did not translate into the top result
he was hoping for. Despite making a good start from tenth
on the grid the American was forced wide by another rider
into turn one and lost several positions, dropping back to
twelfth. However a determined ride from that point onwards
saw him battle back to eighth place – a position he
also now holds in the championship after moving above John
Hopkins (Suzuki).
VALENTINO ROSSI (2nd; +5.088)
“I’m really happy with this second position today.
It wasn’t a great battle like in Sepang, but my rhythm
was really good and my bike worked very well. We had a few
problems in warm-up this morning and, like always, my mechanics,
the Yamaha engineers and Michelin did a great job to make
some last-minute changes to our race set-up. At the start
my M1 was a little bit hard to ride but slowly I found my
rhythm and then bit by bit I started to come closer to Marco.
Once I passed him I started pushing to try to reach Loris
and made the fastest lap, but once he realised I was coming
closer he opened the throttle again and he was just too fast
for me to catch. My bike worked brilliantly since Friday morning
and I want to thank everyone for all their hard work, it seems
that when everything is working for us then it’s hard
for the others! 20 points is a great result for me at this
track, which isn’t one of my favourites, and now we’re
only 12 points behind in the championship. We have two races
left and if we can continue in this way then it’s possible!”
COLIN EDWARDS (8th; +22.492)
 “I
got off the line pretty well but then (Dani) Pedrosa pushed
me out a bit on the exit of turn one and I had to chop it.
I lost speed and then about three people went by me so I was
playing catch-up from then on. I had to spend some time getting
past (Makoto) Tamada and (Randy) De Puniet but then I got
my head down and just kept going in the same rhythm. I was
doing good lap times, consistent with what we were doing all
weekend, but it wasn’t enough to make up for our grid
position and the problems in turn one. About 15 laps in I
hit a bit of a wall, couldn’t hold the load on the rear
tyre and started losing corner speed, so life was more difficult
from then on. Of course I’m really disappointed; we
had a plan but it was messed up by our starting position and
turn one. On the bright side we were able to run the same
good pace we ran all weekend for most of the race, but it
seems a few others, my team-mate included, found a bit extra
today and what we had just wasn’t enough!”
DAVIDE BRIVIO – CAMEL YAMAHA TEAM DIRECTOR
“Today was a very important race for us because we have
been able to reduce the gap by another nine points, which
keeps us on target. Our goal today was to finish on the podium
and we did that so we are happy, even though Loris had a pace
that Valentino wasn’t quite able to follow. Unfortunately
Colin couldn’t quite live up to the high hopes he had
raised before the race so we will investigate the reasons
for that. We still have two races left and we want to help
get him back to the front of the pack. The last three weeks
have required a lot of energy, effort and concentration from
the whole team and I am delighted the way every one of them
has responded. Now we need them to keep it going for two more
races and hopefully we will continue to get our rewards.”
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