MOTOGP

Rossi will do plenty of waving at the IoM TT

Reigning MotoGP World Champion Valentino Rossi will be a special guest at this year’s Isle of Man TT, visiting the iconic road race along with Giacomo Agostini and Lino Dainese – founder of the famous riding apparel.

Dainese is the official safety partner of the IoM TT for the second year in succession, and having Rossi and Ago there will be a major boost for the Italian brand, which has the naming rights to the Superbike TT – won by Aussie Cam Donald last year.

Rossi and Agostini will complete a lap of the course behind the safety car before the Superbike race, riding Yamaha’s new big bang YZF-R1, but it will be Ago who know the circuit better with 10 TT victories to his name in his illustrious career.

“I am fascinated by all sort of motorsport and the Isle of Man is a destination and a race I have wanted to experience for a long time,” said eight-time world champion Rossi. “The MotoGP schedule is very busy around this time of year, but this year the TT has moved dates a little and there is a week gap between Mugello and Catalunya, so now at last we have the opportunity to see this famous event.

“I have seen many famous images from the TT races, and of course heard much about it from Giacomo and Mr Dainese who enjoyed the experience so much last year.”

Interestingly, Rossi has 25 victories to go in MotoGP before he catches Ago’s all-time win record, although he told Italian press last week that he’ll wait and see what he’s up to by the mid stages of 2010 before he finally decides whether or not he’ll shoot for the record in 2011 – which he would have to extend his Yamaha contract to do.

Otherwise, expect Rossi to join Ford in World Rally as we mentioned last week, dispelling any rumours of him ever joining Formula One or Ferrari fulltime in the future.

WORLD SUPERBIKE
American Ben Spies has declared that he won’t give up in the battle for this year’s Superbike World Championship, sitting in second place 60 points behind Japanese veteran Noriyuki Haga and Ducati Xerox.

“This is not how I like to run championships,” Spies admitted. “I’ve had three no points races and basically now it’s coming down to I have to be perfect now and do nothing but win races to catch up in the championship.

“Regardless of the hit we took [at Assen] I’m still proud of the team and the way I’ve ridden as a rookie in this series. I still want to try to win this championship, but it’s going to be tough. I’ve come back from big deficits before and that’s what I’m going to have to do again. It’s gotten pretty interesting pretty quickly.”

Corser in action - broken wrist and all! Photo: Kel Edge

One thing that was kept very quiet over the Superbike World Championship weekend at Assen was the injury of former double series champion Troy Corser, who suffered a broken hand in the Monza tests in the lead up to Assen.

“I didn’t know that I had broken a bone in my left hand until recently, because it didn’t show up on the X-rays in Monza during the tests. But as the days went on, I sort of felt that something wasn’t quite right and that was proved to be so when I had some more X-rays recently,” Corser explained.

“I decided not to have pain-killing injections today because when you have them, you can also lose feeling and sensation in the hand and that was the last thing I wanted when I was diving into a corner at high speed. So, I just had a couple of normal pills instead.”

A pair of tenth places on the continually developing BMW S 1000 RR was a solid result for Corser.

AUSTRALIAN SUPERBIKE
Don’t plan too much with your Mum this Mother’s Day as Australian Motorcycle News will be holding its second annual AUStest at Eastern Creek in the bid to source Australia’s Ultimate Sportsbike.

With testers such as Daryl Beattie, Mark Willis, Adam Fergusson, Craig Coxhell, Jason Kain, Mitch Pirotta, and Beau Beaton, among the usual magazine testers including myself, the event is set to be massive this year.

But apart from top privateer Coxhell, more Australian Superbike riders will be on hand at the test in order to set up the bikes for the manufacturers before we put them to the test, with the likes of Glenn Allerton, Shawn Giles, Kevin Curtain, Shannon Johnson, Jamie Stauffer, Craig McMartin and more all set to join in on the fun.

It’s free of charge to enter and check out the action, so go and check out what is the number one test in the country.

AUSTRALIAN FREESTYLE MOTOCROSS

Hart will host an FMX tour

Yesterday’s announcement that Carey Hart will be introducing the Hart and Huntington Freestyle Motocross Tour in Australia over the news couple of months, the best news is that it will further put dirt bikes out there amongst the mainstream as he and a team of Aussie FMX stars will conduct their magic at P!NK concerts around the country. Check out the full press release right here.