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James Toseland’s MotoGP début in Qatar

® Raceline Photography
By blue2bikes March 7 2008
The first MotoGP race of the season is this weekend, when the Losail Circuit lights come on and the first ever night time race gets underway, in Qatar. Never in the history of the series has a race been held under lights, and when the first race gets underway, at 11pm local time, all eyes will be on the defending champion Casey Stoner, who will be riding with his new number 1 plate.

Present Superbike World Champion James Toseland, riding the Tech 3 Yamaha with a conventional valve sprung engine, as opposed to the new pneumatic valve sprung machine which Valentino Rossi rides, will certainly have his work cut out.

Having been consistently in the top six during the winter testing sessions, and second behind Casey Stoner (Ducati) in the last night test at the circuit, James is under no illusion that the task he faces is a simple one, especially with one of the strongest fields ever for the MotoGP.

James is probably the best British hope we have ever had in the elite series since the late great Barry Sheene, and all eyes will be on James to produce the goods. Being a rookie to the series and with all media eyes upon him, James will certainly have a lot of pressure to give a good performance.

Staying in the Middle East instead of returning home, James is giving himself the best opportunity to become acclimatised prior to Sunday’s race. Not such an easy task when you consider who he is competing against - Casey Stoner has already stated that he is even more determined this year than he was in 2007, and he will certainly be going all out to prove that it was himself and not just the bike that brought him his first championship win last year.

Valentino Rossi is still smarting about Casey’s win last year, and will be in determined mood to put everything back on track this year. Valentino’s Yamaha will certainly have more speed than last year, but until the first race he will have no gauge as to whether he is faster or slower than Casey.

Night time racing brings with it totally different factors than daytime racing, in as much as the time when the race gets underway riders are usually going to bed after a hard day’s racing, so stamina will be a factor at Qatar. This being the main reason why James has stayed behind after the Qatar testing session, enabling him to get up later in the day to enable his body to be ready when the lights come on at 11pm.

Whatever the outcome of the first race, all the attention of the media and public alike will be on Qatar this weekend.


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