Makoto Tamada: “This Was The Best Race For Me So Far This Year”
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Jun 11, 2007
Yamaha
Under scorching summer skies, the Dunlop Yamaha Tech 3 continued to score points in the 2007 MotoGP World Championship as riders, Makoto Tamada and Sylvain Guintoli finished 12th and 14th respectively in an enthralling Grand Prix of Catalunya at Barcelona.
Over the weekend both riders continued using the new Dunlop 16 inch front tyre that was introduced at the previous round in Italy. Dunlop also brought a wide selection of new specification rear tyres with riders and team impressed with the performance and endurance.
The team will remain in Catalunya for a day’s testing tomorrow with an intense tyre testing program to further evaluate this new generation of tyres.
Makoto Tamada
Position: 12thTime: +38.720
This was the best race for me so far this year as I was very close to the world champion, Nicky Hayden and also Colin Edwards on another Yamaha. I did hope to have a better finish as I think if I didn’t have a few problems with some chatter in the middle of the race I am sure I could have passed them but I am very happy with the performance of the tyres. Dunlop brought new tyres to this race and both the new 16 inch front and new rear tyres are working very well They stayed constant for most of the race as the grip level and spinning didn’t change much. This is good as the day was very hot and as we didn’t test too many of the tyres we had and I know we are improving.
Sylvain Guintoli
Position: 14thTime: +44.399
Again I have had a good weekend as we made good progress over the three days. I like this track and we also had a good qualifying session plus I have continued to score points in every race. This is a good boost to my confidence in my first year of MotoGP. I didn’t get the best of starts but I pushed hard for all the race and for the first ten laps I had great rhythm but I also had a few problems with a bit of chatter during the race but this can be expected with new tyres since we have changed to the 16 in front tyre. I was fast straight away and Colin (Edwards) wasn’t pulling away too much but it is a little frustrating that I had to slow and drop off him a bit as I didn’t want to risk a crash too much. We must be fairly happy as we didn’t test all the tyres we wanted to and we only did eight or ten laps on each one before deciding on our race tyres as we had so much to test. I can now look forward to Donington which is like another home race as I now live not very far away from the track with my family.
Herve Poncharal - Dunlop Yamaha Tech 3 Team Manager
This is another good weekend for the team. I say that every week but truthfully we are becoming more competitive. We had another good qualifying session and during the race both riders performed well. Sylvain was very aggressive early on and his lap times were good compared to others before he struck a few problems with some chatter. During the second part of the race we were very close to Colin Edwards and Nicky Hayden and we all felt that we could have passed them if the problems didn’t occur. We now have good references to work with as the package of the tyres and the machine is improving all the time. This year the 800cc machines are more competitive with each other than ever before but we are proving competitive against other factory machines and beating some. With the new tyres we are now getting we are looking forward to the next races as we feel that Dunlop tyres work well at Donington and Assen.
