MotoGP: Valencia Season Finale & A Peek Inside the Repsol Honda Garages

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The Repsol Honda team displays the RC212Vs of team mates Andrea Dovizioso #4 and Dani Pedrosa #26 at the Red Bull Indianapolis MotoGP in August of 2010, round 11 of the 18 round 2010 MotoGP World Championship Series season. Pedrosa went on to win the round by just over 3.5 seconds over Tech 3 Monster Energy Yamaha's Ben Spies, with eventual 2010 MotoGP World Champion Jorge Lorenzo rounding out the podium on his factory Fiat Yamaha YZF-M1. The San Carlo Gresini satellite Honda of Marco Simoncelli just sits out of the shot to the right. The Gresini team is the top-dog of the Honda satellite teams on the circuit and were garaged next to the official factory team at this round.
Pedrosa goes into the season-ending round 18 at Valencia this weekend 2nd in the standings to 2010 Champ Lorenzo, 358-236 points, and sits 19 points up on 3rd place, 7-Time MotoGP World Champion Valentino Rossi. For the most part, if Pedrosa at least finishes the race in the top 10 he should clinch second spot in the season-ending standings. '07 MotoGP World Champion Casey Stoner sits 4th, with 205 points, and Dovizioso rounds out the top 5 with 195 points. Dovi has the best chance of moving up in the standings should Stoner have any major problems in the race on Sunday. 6th in the championship is Spies with 163 points, and '06 MotoGP World Champion Nicky Hayden sits 7th, also with 163 points, but losing out on the tie-breaker to 2-time podium finisher on the year Spies.
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With the last of the major motorcycle racing series winding down for the season this weekend in Valencia, Spain, the 2010 MotoGP World Championship has already been clinched by Fiat Yamaha's Jorge Lorenzo. But with 'pecking order' status still up for grabs throughout the rest of the grid, anything can happen, as what we saw last weekend with the horrid weather conditions in Portugal. The good news is the weather is predicted to be clear and partly cloudy locally for the next two days and temperatures to be in the upper 60sF.

Ben Spies, who clinched the 2010 MotoGP Rookie of the Year Award two races ago, suffered what has been 'termed' a severe sprain during the warm-up for the final event in Portugal last Sunday. The Tech 3 Monster Energy Yamaha pilot's availability was in question for the season-ender as to how severe this sprain was. However, after talking to SuperBikePlanet.com's own Dean Adams the first of the week, he was assured that he would be riding this weekend. Elbowz was 9th in free practice 1 this morning just over a second back from Stoner, and in free practice 2 had moved up to 6th just .838 seconds in arrears of fast-man Lorenzo. '06 MotoGP World Champion Nicky Hayden, who sits in the 7th spot in the championship standings on the Marlboro Ducati, was 6th and 10th in the two sessions today and hovering just under a second behind the front.

You can follow the race action via MotoGP.com from below, and take a 'look' inside the Repsol Honda team garages as well.
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Ultimate Motorcycling.com had this great press release from Repsol Honda that looks into the garages at a MotoGP event. You can expand each of the pictures up towards the top to get a wallpaper-sized version. The first pic is the actual lay-out inside the garage at a typical MotoGP event. Way Cool!

http://www.ultimatemotorcycling.com/motogp-inside-the-repsol-honda-garage

You can follow the season-ending round at Valencia here thanks to the Repsol Honda official site:

http://world.honda.com/MotoGP/2010/18valencia/

Cool World Clock gadget thanks to Honda:

http://world.honda.com/worldclock/index.html

Very nice photo slideshow of the RC212V Repsol machine:

http://world.honda.com/HRC/repsolhondateam/machine/
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You can follow all of the season-ending action at the Valencia circuit via MotoGP's official site below. Free practice session 3 begins at 0505 EDT tomorrow, with qualifying practice at 0905 EDT for the MotoGP class.

The MotoGP race is at 0800 EST (most U.S. States fall back on Standard Time at 0200 Sunday local time) on Sunday morning. The race is also being shown 'live' on SpeedTV in the U.S. at 0800 EST:

http://www.motogp.com/
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