WORLD SUPCRBIK€
POOE s€ason
Pr€vi€w
Wolker
others.
The intensity of
Mick Doohan in
the
pit garage,
the determination
oI an
ANZAC
frontal assault on track, it never
quite happened for him
in 2005. l"laybe
trying too hard, but effort
is usually
rewarded in the end.
A three-man
Yamaha Motor
France
IPONE team will feature 2005
returnees
Norick Abe and Sebastien
Gimbert, even
if Gimbert will
miss the Valencia
round
due to a clash with his endurance com-
mitmenrs. New boy Shinichi
Nakatomi
will find
year
one tough, but
with Abe
around he will at
least have a
point
of ref-
erence in
his
own
tongue.
With all accounted for except
the
Kawasaki
riders,
we've
already
got
an
impressive array
ofSuperbike Elent on
dis-
play,
have we not? Seems that
way
so
far.
Superbike team,
and the
ZX-|0R than
ever before.
The small time 2005 effort
shows
the
green
thoots
of rapid
growth
and expansion.
ln 2005 Chris
Walker
found
the ZX-|0R fast, but flighty and
fickle.
His late-season
teamma(e Fonsi
Nieto
iust
found
World
Superbike
racing
in 2005
much harder than he imagined,
especially early
on, when
ridinS a fre-
quently
slow and fragile
Ducati. Both
Walker and Nieto are back
in the PSG- |
tent this
year (painted green again, such
is
the
new closeness to home base) but
another
fierce competitor
has
ioined
the
Sreat
tripartite congress of
Kawasakis.
Regis
Laconi, 2004 season runner-up,
multi-race
winner in 2005,
may have
dropped a couple of
notches in factory
status, but
he's still fast - even if he's hav-
be bock
the
ki
ing to relearn
the non-
Ducati way on a four-stroke
for the first
time.
5o,
whom have we left
to last in our lineup of 2006
permanent World SuPer-
bike riders?
For no
particu-
lar reason. former top
250cc GP
privateer and
MotoGP runner
Franco
Bartaini, ln the Bertocchi
Kawasaki team this
year, he
will be expecting to do a
lot
more than
make up the
numbers and try
to
qualify
from 1997 champion
John
Kocinski,
not that
many ex-MotoGP riders
have done
much in
World Superbike
in their first
year,
despite
great
expec-
tations
and solid track rea-
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