Vermeulen and Rizla Suzuki win at Le Mans!

Chris Vermeulen raced to his and Rizla Suzuki MotoGP’s first
Grand Prix win at a rain-soaked Le Mans today.

Vermeulen rode an almost faultless race in the wet after heavy
rain started to fall over the 4.180km French circuit. He entered
pit-lane at the end of lap nine to change to his wet-weather
prepared Suzuki GSV-R. Within two laps he hit the front and never
looked under threat all the way to the chequered flag, the
impressive Australian finishing the race over 12 seconds in front
of the second-placed man Marco Melandri. World Championship
leader Casey Stoner finished third to give Bridgestone tyres a
clean sweep on the podium.

Vermeulen now moves up to fifth place in the MotoGP World
Championship with Rizla Suzuki MotoGP going up to third in the
team’s championship.

John Hopkins looked like he was going to follow up his podium at
China last time out with another one today. He produced a
number of stunning laps – including the fastest lap of the race –
to move into first place on lap nine. After he entered the pit-lane
on the next lap to change to his wet bike, he was unable to
sustain his momentum and also suffered with a few issues with the set-up of his GSV-R.

Hopkins brought his bike home in seventh place for his fourth top seven finish of the year, a result that puts him into sixth place in the overall classification.

Rizla Suzuki MotoGP will now stay in France for a day of testing before the MotoGP circus moves across Europe for round six of the championship, to be held at Mugello in Italy on Sunday 3rd June.

Chris Vermeulen: “I’m absolutely over the moon! I am really happy for myself, my crew and everyone involved in the team. We’d had a difficult weekend coming into the race as not everything quite went to plan - but we were getting quicker and quicker and I’m sure if it had been dry today we would have improved more. The conditions were slippery to start with and it was difficult to know how hard to push. Some guys came past me and then a lap or so later they crashed! It started to rain quite heavy and I decided to...” full story on rizla-suzuki-motogp.co.uk