Thursday, October 16, 2008
Live Timing | Event Schedule | IMS Tickets
EVENT: Malaysian Grand Prix
WHERE: Sepang International Circuit, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Circuit is 3.447 miles (5.548 km), with 15 turns. Race is 21 laps.
WHEN: Sunday, Oct. 19. It is the 17th of 18 events this season.
2007 RACE WINNER: Casey Stoner, by 1.701 seconds over Marco Melandri
2007 POLE WINNER: Dani Pedrosa, 2 minutes, 1.877 seconds
U.S. TV: 6-7 p.m. (ET), Sunday, Oct. 19, SPEED
THE AMERICANS: U.S. riders Nicky Hayden (Owensboro, Ky., Repsol Honda Team), Colin Edwards (Houston, Tech 3 Yamaha) and John Hopkins (Ramona, Calif., Kawasaki Racing Team) will compete in this race. Hayden is sixth, Edwards seventh and Hopkins 17th in the MotoGP standings after 16 races this season.
•Nicky Hayden: "The last few races have been a lot of fun and made me pretty happy. We need more, but it's nice to be competitive. I owe a big thanks to everyone involved - Honda, Michelin and all the guys from (Repsol Honda team manager) Yamano all the way through - because it would have been real easy to fold up on me, but the easy way is just not our style. Just need to keep it rolling! Sepang is a great track. I like it, our bike has been running good, and you need a bike that's running fast there. The track has got a little bit of everything: some hard braking, some pretty quick corners like Turns 5 and 6. I think that's why we test there so much. You can't fake it there because both the bike and the rider have got to be able to do everything pretty good."
•Colin Edwards: "As far as my results, it doesn't seem like we've ever had a great one there. We're going there with high hopes. I know what we did there in testing. Testing was good. What we're actually going to do is that we're pretty much light years away from where we were at testing as far as bike length, springs, offsets; everything is completely different now. We're going to put the bike exactly the way it was at the test. Maybe we lost track a little bit of bike settings, so we're going to go back to that and start on that. If that doesn't really work out like we want, then we can always go to what we have now."
•John Hopkins: "I've had a really good vacation since Phillip Island as Ashleigh and I stayed on to visit Sydney before driving up the Gold Coast. I've always wanted to see a bit more of Australia, and we've done the whole tourist thing by snorkeling and spending some time on the beach. I've also continued to train really hard, and it would be great if we can gain some strong results aboard the Kawasaki in the final two rounds. I'm now 100 percent focused on Malaysia, especially as it's a track I enjoy. We had a positive test there in January before I got injured, and I'm confident that we've made some big steps forward since then. I think we can go there and be quite competitive, but it will also be nice to race in some warmer weather."
THEY SAID IT: "No one can say they say they don't know Sepang; it seems like we spend half the year there. Last year we did three tests and a race there, so the nearby airport hotel is like your second home. We spend about four weeks a year there, so you walk in and it's scary because the people know you!" - Repsol Honda Team rider Nicky Hayden, about teams and riders' familiarity with the Sepang International Circuit
FAST FACTS: The winner of the premier-class race has come from the front row in each of the nine previous Malaysian Grands Prix at Sepang … Casey Stoner is the only rider to win in all three classes - MotoGP, 250cc and 125cc - at Sepang during his career … Valentino Rossi can record the 150th podium finish of his career in the three World Championship classes this weekend. Rossi is second in that category all time, behind fellow Italian legend Giacomo Agostini, who had 159 podium finishes … The top-three finishers in the Australian Grand Prix on Oct. 5 - winner Casey Stoner, second-place Valentino Rossi and third-place Nicky Hayden - made history as only the second podium comprised of past or current MotoGP World Champions in the 695-race, 60-year history of Grand Prix motorcycle racing. Champions Wayne Rainey, Wayne Gardner and Eddie Lawson were on the podium at the 1990 Czech Grand Prix … Marco Simoncelli of Italy can clinch the 250cc World Championship at this event. He leads Alvaro Bautista of Spain by 37 points … Simoncelli would become the first rider ever to clinch the 250cc world title despite trailing the championship leader by 49 points during the season … American Stevie Bonsey, from Salinas, Calif., is 14th in the 125cc standings for the DeGraaf Grand Prix team.
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2009 Red Bull Indianapolis GP tickets: The second annual Red Bull Indianapolis GP is scheduled for Sunday, Aug. 30, two weeks earlier than this year's date.
A three-day event ticket for a reserved seat or general admission can be renewed online at the Tickets section at www.indianapolismotorspeedway.com. Fans also can request an upgrade of their reserved Race Day tickets at the Tickets section.
Ticket applications for new customers also are being accepted. New customers are encouraged to order early to secure the best available seats.
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