Strong sixth for Hopkins and Rizla Suzuki in Estoril thriller -ozzy go- rizla-suzuki-motogp.co.uk

Rizla Suzuki MotoGP racer John Hopkins battled his way to sixth
place at a pulsating Portuguese Grand Prix in Estoril today.

Starting from the fourth row and back in 10th place, Hopkins got
another fantastic start and was up into sixth by the first corner.
He hung on to the pack in front but was unable to find a way past
fifth placed man Marco Melandri as the leading four began to pull
away.

Hopkins tried all he could to get past Melandri and did manage it
later on in the race, but the Anglo-American star made a small
mistake and Melandri came back past almost immediately.
Hopkins collected 10 points for his efforts today and now moves
up into fourth place in the riders’ championship.

Chris Vermeulen had a tough afternoon as he was unable to get
the start he needed from the fourth row and was relegated to
16th position early on in the race. The Australian’s never-say-die
attitude shone through and he fought his way up to 12th position,
before a vibration issue with his bike caused him to lose a place
and he brought his Suzuki GSV-R safely home in 13th.

Today’s race was held in warm and sunny conditions and a crowd
of 41,566 witnessed former World Champion Valentino Rossi win
one of the most exciting races of the season with Dani Pedrosa
second and current championship leader Casey Stoner – on his
Bridgestone-shod Ducati - third.

Rizla Suzuki MotoGP now travels immediately to its ‘home’ Grand
Prix in Japan for round 15 of the MotoGP World Championship at
Motegi on Sunday 23rd September.

John Hopkins “I got a great start which is becoming a bit of a
regular feature - so I need to keep that up! I made up as many
positions as I could at the start, but I got stuck behind Marco and
Nicky and they were getting kind of crazy at the beginning – they
were all over the place passing each other. From then on Nicky
pulled away and Marco was just gapping me coming out of the
corners and I couldn’t find a consistent line to enable me to get
up close enough to be able to pass him. I did get by him towards
the end but I made some mistakes and he came back past me.
The Suzuki worked great and the Bridgestones - compared to last
year - were awesome and congratulations to them for getting on
to the podium. click on ozzy go to the full story on Rizla Suzuki