John Hopkins raced to his best MotoGP result today as he brought his Rizla Suzuki GSV-R
home in a superb second position at the Czech Republic Grand Prix.
Starting from fourth on the grid Hopkins got a great start and was up into second position
within the first few turns, a position that he never gave up for the whole race as he and
eventual race-winner Casey Stoner pulled away from the rest of the field . Hopkins did
challenge Stoner for first place, but was riding at the absolute limit and decided to bring
the bike home safely in second rather than risk all on a battle with the Ducati rider.
Chris Vermeulen finished with a fantastic fifth place to give Rizla Suzuki MotoGP its best
pair of results this season. Vermeulen got a bit boxed in at the start and was ninth at the
end of lap one. He quickly made up ground as Colin Edwards fell in front of him and then
he set about battling it out with three other riders. The aggressive Australian passed
Randy de Puniet on lap nine and Loris Capirossi two laps later. He then sized up Valentino
Rossi, before overtaking the seven-time World Champion on lap 13. Vermeulen tried to
chase down the riders in front of him, but the gap was too great and he had to settle for
fifth.
Vermeulen and Hopkins are now tied on 124 points in the riders’ World Championship
table, with the former just leading the way due to his victory in France. With both riders
on the same amount of points they have jointly become Suzuki’s highest point scorers on
a four-stroke MotoGP machine, both surpassing Hopkins’s total of 116 last year.
Today’s race was watched by a record breaking Czech crowd of over 141,000, that
witnessed Stoner win on the Bridgestone-shod Ducati and stretch his lead in the
championship to 60 points.
Rizla Suzuki MotoGP will now stay in Brno for a two day test and are next in race-action
in two weeks time when the MotoGP circus moves to Misano in Italy on Sunday 2nd
September. click on ozzy go to the full story on rizla-suzuki-motogp.co.uk