Suzuki ready for Indianapolis GP

Bautista ready to take on the ‘Brickyard’

Rizla Suzuki girls

Photo by: Crescent Suzuki

Rizla Suzuki is on its way Stateside for the 12th round of the 2011 MotoGP World Championship which will be held at the famous Indianapolis Motor Speedway in America.

Álvaro Bautista will be looking to continue with the huge potential that has been shown by him and the Suzuki GSV-R is recent races. He looked likely to fight for a top-five finish last time out at Brno, before lady-luck robbed him of the opportunity and he crashed. He is in a determined and focused mood to get a good qualifying position on Saturday to give him a better chance of getting away with the quick group come race-day and show what both he and the Rizla Suzuki are capable of.

Indianapolis will be staging a MotoGP for the fourth time in its illustrious history when the bikes take to the track on Sunday 28th August. The ‘Brickyard’ is more usually associated with Indy Car and NASCAR racing, but the two-wheeled event has quickly become a highlight on the circuit’s calendar. Known as the 'Brickyard' due to over three million paving bricks that used to cover the whole surface, now less than a metre of these bricks exist at the start line of 4,216m track. This fascinating symbol to the old days of racing is now simply known as the ‘Yard of Bricks’. The circuit has a permanent seating capacity for more than 250,000 people and a big crowd is expected this weekend when MotoGP rolls into town. The fans will also be entertained by not only the on-track excitement, but many other off-track events, both at the ‘Brickyard’ and in downtown Indianapolis – making this one of the party Grands Prix of the year.

Rizla Suzuki will be rolling out on to ‘Gasoline Alley’ on Friday for two free practice sessions. This will be followed by another practice on Saturday morning and then the all-action qualifying session in the afternoon. Sunday’s 28-lap race gets underway at 14.00hrs local time (18.00hrs GMT) when Bautista will be going all-out to add his name to history books of this famous circuit.

Álvaro Bautista:

“We have certainly made some big steps with the GSV-R over the last few races, but we still need to work on things at Indianapolis. We need find out what the true potential of the bike is and I need to improve my qualifying session performance. It is difficult to see if we can compete with the guys at the front if I am starting at the back of the grid and I have to use so much time and energy to get up to them. These are things that we are determined to do and if we are successful in them then who knows what the bike and the team are capable of producing. I finished eighth at Indianapolis last year and I know we can do better than that now with the package we have. I will be pushing right from the start and trying to make all the hard work we’ve done in recent races give us a good end result in America.”