The Ducati team of Valentino Rossi and Nicky Hayden will make their way to France this weekend for the fourth round of the 2011 MotoGP season. The Ducati team has yet to find the podium, but after a successful testing session at Estoril, both riders are confident that they are moving in the right direction.
The Le Mans circuit is a unique track, that is often described as a “stop and go” race. Racers will find short straight aways followed by sharp turns throughout the Le Mans race, making it difficult for riders to maintain a good rhythm.
“Le Mans is a historic track, and I always like to go to these places with rich motorsport traditions, even if the stop-and-go layout is a little peculiar. The atmosphere is always really nice, with the grandstand filled with fans on both Saturday and Sunday.”
Rossi holds the circuit record at Le Mans and was the pole sitter during the 2010 race. His teammate Jorge Lorenzo, however, would end up winning the French GP in 2010. Rossi has won three times at the circuit and has another four podiums.
“The track isn’t particularly technical but maintaining a good rhythm is tricky. There are many points where we brake really hard for corners, so then it’s important to have strong acceleration on the exit,” Rossi continued. “We’ll see how well we’re able to deal with those characteristics. We’re coming off a test that confirmed that we’ve started to go in the right direction and, although we’re still in the first phase, we hope we can find a good setup for Le Mans so that we can be faster in the qualifying session. We’re all working hard, and we’re making progress, but we still have to keep improving.”
Nicky Hayden doesn’t have the best track record at Le Mans, but he was able to achieve a fourth place finish in 2010. Hayden will be looking for his first French GP podium this weekend.
“Traditionally, Le Mans hasn’t been a good track for me. I’ve never had a podium or a front row there, but I was fourth there last year, which was my best-ever result,” Hayden said. “You can’t really make too much out of that, but we’ll try to take the information we collected during the test at Estoril and see if we can put it to good use in France. The weather at Le Mans can be either way, especially this time of year, which is just part of racing. One good thing I look forward to is that I think the best strength of our bike right now is stability under hard braking, and Le Mans has a lot of hard braking. Traditionally, the grip there isn’t very good, so that’s something we’re probably really going to have to work on. We’ll go there and see what we’ve got.”
