SETUP REPORT - 06/09/2006

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SETUP REPORT - 06/09/2006

Superbike World Championship preview: round 10 - Lausitz

Circuit: EuroSpeedway Lausitz

Country: Germany

Track length: 4265m

Opened: 2000

Lap record: 1:39.679 (Ruben Xaus, Ducati)

Last year's winners: Lorenzo Lanzi (Ducati) and Chris Vermeulen (Honda)

World superbike takes its annual trip to Germany this weekend as the
impressive EuroSpeedway Lausitz plays host to round ten of the 12 that
make up this year's championship.

Last weekend the rain gods wreaked havoc at Assen, with each of the top
four riders in the championship going into the weekend crashing at
least once in the races. For Yamaha Motor Italia the Dutch races were
bittersweet: on one hand Noriyuki Haga missed a golden chance to pull back
points on the championship leader Troy Bayliss (Ducati), while Andrew
Pitt was the man of the day, taking a second place in each outing to
catapult him two places in the championship, up to fourth.

Situated in the former East Germany, EuroSpeedway was opened in 2000
and first played host to the series the following year. The venue
comprises of a high-speed oval circuit with an inner road course which is used
for the superbikes. The circuit itself consists of several slow speed
corners linked by long straights. Previous experiences of the circuit
suggest that qualifying will be important as overtaking is difficult due
to the layout and 'single-line' nature of the track.

The venue hosted a test for the Pirelli development teams in July,
including Yamaha Motor Italia, with Haga fastest and Pitt just one tenth of
a second behind. Haga will look to bounce back from his Assen
disappointment in the only way he knows, by fighting for the win at a track
where he finished on the podium twice last year. The Japanese rider's
failure to score in the Netherlands saw him slip back to 102 points behind
Bayliss with just 150 points at stake in the final three rounds, making
winning the title a tough task for the ever popular Yamaha star.

For team-mate Pitt, the German race gives him an opportunity to
continue his impressive form. The top scorer in Assen is now just one place
and 33 points behind his more experienced team-mate, with the Australian
hoping to add to his tally of five podiums so far this year.

"When your confidence is high you look forward to every race and that's
how it is with me just now," explains Pitt. "I'm really enjoying racing
just now because our bike is working so well everywhere we go, but it's
not just about me as the team has worked so hard to get us to this
point. The R1 is not only one of the best bikes on the grid, it is also
very consistent and we can now pretty much take it out of the truck and go
racing without having to make big changes.

"Assen was a really tough weekend but to get a couple of second places
in such differing conditions shows how well the bike is working.
Getting ahead of Barros and Corser in the championship was the main thing and
now we have to make sure we keep challenging for podiums and wins so
that we're ahead of them at the end of the season. We had a really good
test at Lausitz about a month ago so the whole team is looking forward
to racing here."

In the Supersport World Championship, Yamaha Motor Germany's Kevin
Curtain goes to his squad's home race with a seven point advantage over
Honda's Sebastien Charpentier after taking second place at a wet Assen
race.

"Assen was a great result for me and I'm a lot more confident going to
Lausitz," says Curtain. "The objective in Assen was to take points from
Charpentier but, equally, it was important not to throw it down the
road in those wet conditions. The race was tough because we had no wet
weather data, so to come away with a seven point advantage in the
championship was about as good as we could ask for.

"Lausitz has been a good track to me in the past. I won there in 2001
and again last year, when I took my first win for Yamaha Motor Germany.
We've also tested there and have a lot of set-up information, so we're
not going there in the dark like we did in Assen."

Curtain's team-mate and fellow Australian Broc Parkes will be absent
from the German race after sustaining serious injuries in Assen. The
24-year-old was leading the race only to crash out after touching a wet
white line on the outside of the track. Parkes was taken to hospital where
he was diagnosed as having sustained a punctured lung and several
broken ribs. Thankfully the injury has proved slightly less serious than
originally feared and no operation was required to fix his injured ribs.
Parkes is currently recuperating in hospital and former world champion
Fabien Foret will take his ride in Germany. The 2002 world champ is no
stranger to Yamaha, having raced for the Yamaha Motor Italia supersport
team in 2004. The Frenchman started out the year in superbikes and was
the obvious replacement for Parkes, having recently left his team by
mutual consent. He will ride the latest generation YZF-R6 for the first
time in Friday's free practice session.