Andy

Casey Stoner (Ducati) powered to victory here at Losail with Valentino Rossi (Yamaha) second and Dani Pedrosa (Repsol Honda RC212V) third. This was a convincing win for the Italian factory

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Under new tyre regulations and with an 800c capacity limit MotoGP 2007 got underway at a sunny Losail circuit with a pole for Valentino Rossi (Yamaha), second place on the grid for Casey Stoner (Ducati) with the final front row slot going to Colin Edwards (Yamaha). With an ambient temperature of a modest 23 degrees, and with the track at 27 degrees, conditions were ripe for riders to make the most of this benign weather. They ripped around this 5.4km track without suffering the customary privations of heat exhaustion when this race was held in October here in the Qatar desert. The circuit was also relatively dust free owing to the Superbike race held here two weeks ago and a series of local events that have laid down rubber on the tarmac and made the track a much grippier proposition than it has been in recent years. As the hour long MotoGP qualifying session got underway it was Marco Melandri (Fortuna Honda RC212V) who headed the timesheet before Carlos Checa (LCR Honda RC212V) snatched pole away from him, only for John Hopkins (Suzuki) to then temporarily wrest number slot from them both. But this was mere early skirmishing as riders put in laps on prospective race rubber while conserving a limited number of qualifying tyres for the final minutes. With only 14 front tyres and 17 rears available for each rider, longer stints on track without constant returns to the pits for changes were the norm. Twenty minutes into the session the order was Edwards, Rossi, Hopkins, Loris Capirossi (Ducati), Melandri and Checa. Then as per last season Kawasaki was the first team to fit a qualifier as Randy de Puniet sped to a 1m 56.331s lap to hit pole with 30 minutes remaining. Within the last twenty minutes Shinya Nakano (Konica Minolta Honda RC212V), who had been running in ninth spot, slid off at high speed without injury. Meanwhile Stoner had hoisted himself to second with Melandri third fastest and Edwards on pole with a time of 1m 56.156s. Stoner then upped the pace to go pole with a 1m 55.794s lap ahead of de Puniet, Hopkins and Edwards who had now been bumped down to fourth on row two. Nicky Hayden (Repsol Honda RC212V) who had been struggling here so far elevated himself to fifth with a prodigious effort, before ending up ninth overall. But Edwards was comfortable enough to squeeze yet more speed from his bike and with seven minutes left he managed a 1m 55.654s time to go pole again. Dani Pedrosa (Repsol Honda RC212V) had not been finding things easy here and his ride to sixth with just five minutes to go was as much as he could manage before ending up fifth overall with a 1m 55.361s time on his very last lap. It was Toni Elias (Fortuna Honda RC212V) who found the most speed from his RC212V in the closing moments when he flew to a 1m 55.358s time, just 0.356s off the pole time, to head the second row of the grid as fourth fastest qualifier. Kenny Roberts (Roberts KR212V) could do no better than 18th fastest, nearly two and a half seconds shy of Rossi

Afraid not. Blogs always show most recent first. Once you have a few entries on a blog you wouldn't want folk to have to scroll to find the latest. Sort of a Catch 22.

Did he crash into Ivor The Engine?

C'mon Eddie - we're waiting...

I beg your pardon? If I see fit to comment on the recent plethera of van ads then I will do so. Oh and click here

I seriously need to take the ability to mess about with fonts away from users...

Blimey - this is confusing. I'm logged in as testuser on Firefox and Andy in IE. I'm in the process of writing a tutorial for the Blogging system (using testuser as my example so I can include extensive screenshots). The concept is lots of different articles - much like if you made a diary entry in a real diary. You would naturally write that entry on a seperate page relevant to that date. Blogs are no different. If you've looked at the blogs so far they only have one entry each. Another entry would appear as a different item. It will all, hopefully, become apparent once I've finished the tutorial. I know this is yet another first for Trials Central and fully expect people to think WTF? I'm keen to see some uptake on it though so am writing the tutorial to explain things in as clear terms as possible

That is a nice little system they've got there. Dead easy for people to use.

Click here Type in IOW and geez! There it is!

I'd take a look at the Classifieds on the front page. Trials Central seems to be rapidly turning into a Used Van Showroom...

Typing in upper case on forums is considered SHOUTING and impolite.

Brian - you're going to have to be careful you don't get held up in the roadworks :lol:

A user guide to the forums/blogs etc is really something I would need to write. I intended doing blogs anyway once I've fully explored it myself.

American Honda riders Miguel Duhamel and Jake Zemke go into Saturday's Daytona 200 race aiming to give Honda a third consecutive victory in America's most prestigious road race, a record as the first manufacturer to win three 200s on the bounce. The two riders will be equipped with the latest version of the CBR600RR that carried Zemke to victory last year and Duhamel the win in 2005. Duhamel 38, from LaSalle - Quebec, Canada is chasing a record breaking sixth win in the event. Currently tied on five wins with fellow American Scott Russell, Duhamel is a strong favourite of many to use the CBR600RR power to dominate the race but Zemke has tasted victory at in the 200 and will push him all the way in the 68 lap race. Should Duhamel score a sixth record breaking win he will be the oldest rider ever to win the race, the legendary Dick Mann is the current holder of that honour winning the 200 when just short of his 37th birthday. "All the Honda boys will be on the same bike so they'll be really fast," Duhamel explained. "And then you'll have the riders from Yamaha, Kawasaki, Suzuki and Ducati who should be really strong as well. They might pop their head in there and surprise some people. But that's the nature of the Daytona 200, you can always expect surprises from that race." "The Daytona 200, as anyone can tell you if you grew up racing, you knew all about it," Zemke said after winning last year. "It doesn't matter (even) if you're a motocrosser. Motocrossers know about the Daytona 200. Everybody knows about the Daytona 200. So it's something, as a kid that you look at the names on the list of the winners of the 200, and it's a who's who list, and I'm proud to put my name up there." The Daytona race will be the only time the American Honda riders campaign the CBR600RR their main target for 2007 will be the AMA Superbike Championship. In the premier class of US road racing the two will contest the 11 event 19 race schedule aboard CBR1000RR Hondas in a bid to regain the title last won by reigning MotoGP World Champion Nicky Hayden, in 2002. The first Superbike race action of the season will be the curtain raiser on 200-race day and Duhamel and Zemke will chase maximum Superbike points to get the season off to a perfect start. Fitted with traction control for the first time the CBR1000RRs have been running consistently fast times in winter testing and both men are confident of finishing higher this time round than the third place finish overall by Duhamel last season. Zemke ended 2006 in eighth place. The Superbike race will serve a double purpose on Saturday. The race is crucial to the early season fortunes of the American Honda team but also caries the additional benefit of data gathering on track conditions, tyre wear and pit crew refuelling practice in preparation for the Daytona 200 later in the day.

Could you not collectively offer to plant a tree screen? 1) to muffle the noise and 2) carbon emission offsetting. Make the Trials community look nice and green as well as working with the complainant to resolve their issues - although if you don't know who the complainant is and what exactly their issues are then it is hard to quantify if that would work or not.

Hmmmm. That location is the same village in the same county as I am - and it ain't a big village! Now who round here could that be???

Australian Race Report 2

Zippy - ask anyone who knows me - I am not one for the limelight. I run a mile if anyone even tries to place me in it. The local radio station in Fort William wanted to interview me last year as part of their SSDT coverage - I hid from them. John Hulme wants to do an article on me and Trials Central for YOU HAVE USED WORDS OR A PHRASE WHICH ARE NOT PERMITTED ON THIS WEBSITE. PLEASE DELETE YOUR POST/TOPIC. DO NOT TRY TO CIRCUMVENT THE FILTERS IN PLACE ON THIS WEBSITE - I'm still in hiding on that one. Trials Training Center want to do an interview for their podcasts - I've kind of.... maybe....tentatively....perhaps...agreed to that one as it's just a voice thing and few in the US know me anyway, however I'll probably hide regardless! As for Barney - I can't even recall how or when he came to be my avatar, but it's been years. AtomAnt then offered to animate it with the trademark belch and I could hardly refuse. It does, however have its downside. Last year I went into a restaurant for a coffee before a meeting. They had free WIFI so I took advantage and accidently hit Barney without the sound muted. Ever seen a restaurant go silent and have everybody stare at you?

Phishing is the largest growing area in viruses/trojans/spam etc and the fraudsters are becoming more and more sophisticated in their attempts to gain personal information. Whilst you guys seem to be pretty clued up and I certainly am - we can monitor, at any given time, 25% of the entire traffic on the interweb. Our monitoring centre in the UK is pretty cool - it's inside an ex Cold War Nuclear Bunker - Linky with pics. I get more alert emails than I know what to do with and trust me - they're out to get you and using more and more sophisticated methods of attack. Despite being a geek, I don't even do online banking...

Apart from getting shafted on my one and only attempt to purchase anything via EBay, I read IT news websites daily as part of my job and have read far too many stories of lax security. This one was from March 2nd - just one day ago... This one was from 23rd Feb. Those two are just recent ones from the one IT site I happen to have bookmarked on this computer. Most of my IT website links are on my laptop as that's what I use for work. Work that just happens to be for the world's biggest computer security company I doubt any of you could convince me ever to trust it - which is a shame because there's stuff on there I'd love to buy or at least bid on.

The reason NoChex is there is you don't need any kind of account to pay - or at least you never used to. Not checked for a wee while. (oh and they take less commission than PayPal)

True story - place I used to work we had a policy where users had to change their password every 6 months. Company policy was if anybody forgot their password after changing it then it was changed to "penishead" (can I say that on here?!) and their ability to change it to something else was removed OTF - I've just emailed you on the twinshocks email address. Let me know by email if you have login issues. All should be fine though.

Erm.....otf1.......otf? Rings a bell..... hmmmm......... ARGHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!! I'll sort it out now. I'll be deleting otf1 when done so don't be surprised if it suddenly tells you that you don't exist. Just log back in as old trials fanatic. If you hadn't just given me a tenner I'd make you wear the hat PS remember as a supporter you now have 20MB of upload space on the TC Server for photos. No need to use Photobucket etc.