A wealth of talent will be on show at the 2009 Findomestic Memorial Bettega, set to be held at the Motor Show in Bologna on 7-8 December. Alongside FIA WRC World Rally Champions Petter Solberg and Marcus Gronholm, FIA Junior WRC World Champion Sébastien Ogier and 2009 FIA WRC World Rally runner-up Mikko Hirvonen, the Motorsport Arena will also see nine-time MotoGP World Champion Valentino Rossi in action.
The Italian rider has decided to return to the Motor Show after previously experiencing the Memorial Bettega. Rossi will get behind the wheel of the Ford Focus WRC prepared by Malcolm Wilson’s M-Sport in the team’s UK factory.
According to official Ford driver Hirvonen, who has already raced on the mixed tarmac/dirt track of the Findomestic Memorial Bettega, Rossi will provide stiff competition alongside the other participants.
“As far as I'm concerned, all of the adversaries are dangerous, especially given that the starting line up includes drivers of the calibre of Gronholm, Solberg, Ogier, Navarra and Östberg, to say nothing of the great Valentino,” said Hirvonen.
Other motorcycling names will go head-to-head in the Yokohama Superbikers Drifting contest, where they will be at the wheel of Ford Mustangs prepared by Gandin Motors and fitted with Yokohama tyres. Amongst those who will unleash the horsepower of the US coupés will be Andrea Dovizioso, Mattia Pasini, Andrea Iannone and Loris Reggiani.

Pons Kalex’s research ahead of the inaugural Moto2 season will take its next step on Wednesday, with the team conducting the second test of its 600cc 4-stroke prototype in Valencia.
The scheduled Moto2 test at Valencia from December 9-10 will see a host of machines taken out on the track, as teams and riders maintain their pre-season programmes.
For the Pons Kalex team, who have been further developing their bike over the past few weeks in Germany, Axel Pons and Sergio Gadea will be collecting data to add to what was established in Valencia in the post-season test last month.
Pons, who had an operation in Barcelona two weeks ago to remove pins from his legs, will be joined by Gadea, who will ride the bike for the first time and is being viewed by the team as a potential acquisition for the category next season.
Team manager Sito Pons said, “Although the winter seems to be a long one, the start of the season will be here very soon. When you’re working on a bike for a new category, it’s very important to have a prototype that can be developed quickly and in the best way possible.”
“In this sense, Kalex is doing a great job, and with an extraordinary level of technology. The test in Valencia will be another step in our process, and we are convinced we can get some very good results.”
After the test in Valencia this week, Pons Kalex plan to return to the track from December 14-15 at the Almeria circuit.

Day of Champions is the perfect way for race fans to start their MotoGP weekend, and Riders for Health are thrilled to be welcomed to Silverstone on MotoGP’s return to this historic circuit.
With the 2010 race scheduled for Sunday 20th June, the Day of Champions will take place on Thursday 17th June.
Each year thousands of fans join Riders for Health and the teams and riders from the MotoGP paddock to help raise thousands of pounds to help get health workers on the road in Africa. Day of Champions 2009 raised a total of £177,000.
In 2010 fans will have the chance to see inside the paddock and pit-lane at Silverstone for the first time. This is a unique chance to see behind the scenes of one of the world’s most exciting sporting events.
As always the highlight of the day will be the famous Day of Champions auction. The stars of MotoGP will be onstage to help auction signed memorabilia, helmets, leathers and paintings. In 2009 the Day of Champions MotoGP auction raised £77,000.
Fans will also get to see the future heroes of MotoGP when the riders from the 125cc World Championship take to the stage, along with the stars of the brand new Moto2 class.
More information about Day of Champions 2010 will be announced soon, along with details of when tickets will be going on sale. To make sure you are the first to know, keep checking the Riders for Health website at www.riders.org.
You can also sign up to Riders’ monthly email newsletter, Riders News, online. Riders are also on Twitter at www.twitter.com/ridersforhealth.

The lead-up to the 2009 season did not run as smoothly as Marco Melandri would have wished, with the Italian expecting to ride an official Kawasaki bike. The factory’s decision to withdraw from the MotoGP World Championship this year meant Melandri was entered as a single rider entrant with Hayate Racing, but without any guarantees of competitiveness on the Ninja ZX-RR.
Entering an important season as he aimed to recover from a tough previous year with Ducati Marlboro, the initial signs were that the 27 year-old had been largely unaffected by the pre-season change in his deal with Kawasaki. Despite a poor start in Qatar, Melandri put together a run of three strong results. Sixth and fifth in Japan and Jerez respectively were followed up by a first – and only – podium of the season in France in a race which started in wet conditions.
After his remarkable second place in the flag-to-flag contest at Le Mans in May, a stretch of four races in which Melandri made the top ten only once – at Laguna Seca – followed. At Mugello he even led the race, but a final placing of 11th was part of a series of results that was something of a dip compared to his earlier form.
Back-to-back seventh places at Donington and Sachsenring saw Melandri break his run, and at the British Grand Prix he qualified in a season’s best place of seventh on the grid.
Disappointment was next up however with consecutive crashes at Brno – a final-lap collision with Mika Kallio – and Indianapolis, where Melandri was battling with James Toseland for sixth place until he crashed out with three laps remaining.
Despite these mishaps Melandri managed three more top-ten finishes in the final five races of the campaign, even with throttle problems on his ZX-RR, but ended on a frustrating note as his acceleration issues led to 17th place in Valencia. He finished the season in 10th place when there had been real hope of winning the battle for seventh in the overall standings.
It was nevertheless an impressive effort in 2009 from the Italian in some testing circumstances. In 2010 Melandri returns to the San Carlo Honda Gresini team for whom he secured five victories with in three seasons, and finished runner-up with in the 2005 World Championship.

Valencia provided the setting for Capcom to present the MotoGP 09/10 game as Mika Kallio and Aleix Espargaró tested their skills on the virtual version of their bikes.
Trying the game out for the first time the duo pitted their wits against one another, as they took a look at how gamers will be able to select from all the riders, teams and 17 circuits from the official 2009 MotoGP season upon the game’s release in March. Those who play will also be able to access free downloadable content from the 2010 season as it unfolds, keeping up to date with all developments as they happen.
Available on the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3, MotoGP 09/10 takes an exciting new direction and features an all new Arcade mode, in which players must complete different race challenges before time runs out. There is also a Career mode, where players take control of their MotoGP championship both on and off the track, competing in the races and managing their team as they try to build their career as a racing pro.
Like Kallio and Espargaró, players can compete in a full championship season across the 125cc, 250cc and MotoGP classes, and challenge others around the world in online mode.
The game, which has been developed by Monumental Games and will be published by Capcom, will be available for purchase in March 2010.

Fiat Yamaha enjoyed a clean sweep in the MotoGP World Championship for the second year running in 2009, with Jorge Lorenzo even making it a one-two in the riders’ Championship by finishing second to Valentino Rossi, and Yamaha Motor Racing Managing Director Lin Jarvis has reviewed what he describes as a ‘great year’.
“We’ve had a fantastic season,” said a delighted Jarvis. “To finish with the triple crown of three victories for the second year running is fantastic, and so is Jorge taking second in the Championship. It’s been a great year.”
Lorenzo’s constant pressure on Rossi throughout the season made it an enthralling battle between the team mates, and Jarvis expects more of the same next year.
“One rider didn’t totally dominate the Championship, it was very close and very tense, but Valentino made fewer mistakes and had many victories, so he did a great job,” said Jarvis. “Jorge made good progress as well, but let’s see what next year will bring because Casey Stoner has also shown how fast he is and Dani Pedrosa again showed today what he’s capable of. So the top four are a cut above the rest, I would say, and next year will be hard.”
Asked whether a repeat of Yamaha’s triple success could be achieved for a third successive year, Jarvis acknowledged the quality of the competition as well as his own team’s.
“Everything is possible! I think we have super riders, a great team and good engineers, so we have all the tools,” he said. “But of course our competitors are attacking from every side and when you are the leader you can only be attacked. So it’s not easy to do it again, but we’ll certainly give our maximum effort and I think we have all the ingredients.”

Jorge Lorenzo was the guest of honour at an event to unveil the new Jupiter Z this week, as he appeared at a 5,700 capacity convention centre in Jakarta.
The 22 year-old, who started his South East Asia tour in Bangkok last week, took part in a spectacular show and was dressed in his Fiat Yamaha colours.
“Today I have experienced one of the greatest spectacles in an auditorium I can remember,” said Lorenzo. “The show was impressive and it makes you realise how much power this country has. It’s growing at a fast rate and Yamaha sells nearly three million units annually.”
“I’ve felt very welcome in all the places I have been this season, but I have to admit Indonesia feels especially important even though it hasn’t had a Grand Prix since the mid 90s. I would love this country to return to the MotoGP World Championship, as it has displayed the affection it has for motorcycles.”
Lorenzo will now enjoy a short holiday in Bali after concluding his four-day Yamaha tour.

Fausto Gresini has given an honest assessment of his team’s 2009 season, and is positive about the forthcoming campaign with an all-Italian rider line-up of rookie Marco Simoncelli and the experienced Marco Melandri.
Looking back over the season just finished, Gresini analysed the 7th and 8th places which were achieved in the final standings by Toni Elías and Alex de Angelis respectively. The Italian was pleased with how his team had performed in the latter half of the season, with a podium for Elías at Brno and De Angelis at Indianapolis making for a strong finish.
“I must say we had a very difficult first part of the Championship, with the second half decidedly better,” said the team boss. “We achieved two podiums, which is not many but it is important to our team. In the end, we achieved our goals, with 7th and 8th position for our riders, and a good placement for the team (fifth).”
“Without doubt it has not been an easy campaign, but MotoGP is a competitive category and we have done a good job, although we’re not content and in the future we want to do better.”
The combination of Simoncelli and Melandri – who was MotoGP World Championship runner-up with the team in 2005 – is one which Gresini is convinced will help the team develop further.
“We are already thinking about 2010. We cannot set ourselves strict targets because then it is difficult to keep promises,” said Gresini. “We want to do very well, with a rookie who is very fast in Simoncelli and a skilled rider in Melandri, who I know well. In the next Championship we can do very well, and are convinced Honda will make a more competitive bike. Obviously we have to work hard, but we always do that. We are ready and will face 2010 with a calm outlook.”

By Paul Denning’s own admission 2009 was an inconsistent year for Rizla Suzuki, and the team manager is determined to make next season more successful with a vastly improved display.
A quartet of fifth-placed finishes for Loris Capirossi was accompanied by a series of mixed results for the Italian and his team-mate Chris Vermeulen, with the pair ending the campaign in ninth and 12th places respectively and without any podiums.
“We were not consistent,” began Denning’s honest assessment. “In some races we were super strong and Loris was able to do a great job with the bike, but the bike was not consistent in all conditions. In the end that was reflected in Loris’ finish of ninth in the championship and Chris who came 12th, and we didn’t deserve so much more.”
Denning continued, “We have to improve the bike and the consistency a lot and nobody within the team is satisfied with this year’s result. Suzuki did a great job with the engine performance, now it’s not too bad and is quite competitive with the other guys, but we have to improve the chassis performance and this is the big priority for this winter.”
Teaming up with Capirossi next season will be MotoGP rookie Álvaro Bautista, who has impressed the Rizla Suzuki structure in tests at Valencia and Estoril. Denning believes the Spaniard is the perfect accompaniment alongside veteran Capirossi.
“The 2010 season is a new start with Bautista, which we’re very excited about. He has shown that he’s a racer and this spirit should really help push the team forward,” Denning enthused. “For us the balance in the team for next year is correct, because we have to improve the machine a lot and we need an experienced rider to do that. I think Loris’ job will be to develop the bike, and to push hard like he always does and to help Álvaro. I think this is a good combination for us.”

Randy de Puniet equalled his best-ever finish to a season in MotoGP this year with 11th position, and his LCR Honda team manager Lucio Cecchinello believes the Frenchman is well placed to better that in 2010.
A series of good finishes peaked with De Puniet’s first and only podium of the season in round 10 at Donington, which took him up to eighth in the standings. However, a training accident after the British Grand Prix left the 28 year-old with a broken ankle which required screws to be inserted, and while De Puniet managed to ride through the pain for the remainder of the season his form suffered as a result, thus depriving him of a higher overall finish.
De Puniet was involved in a tight battle for seventh place in the MotoGP standings until the end of the season, and the form displayed by him this year has led Cecchinello to aim high for the new campaign.
“We are quite happy with the results, because we definitely improved,” said Cecchinello. “We had a good chance to put in good performances, especially when we made the podium in the British GP, so we are quite happy.”
“This year we had the chance to finish, let’s say, as the best independent team in the rankings. We had a couple of crashes and Randy broke his ankle in August so we didn’t achieve our objective. Definitely next year we would like to be the first independent team in the ranking.”

Ducati Marlboro completed their test at the Ricardo Tormo Circuit on Wednesday with Casey Stoner and Nicky Hayden having made good progress on their Desmosedici prototypes.
Both were pleased with the changes made to their machines by Filippo Preziosi, with Stoner’s best lap of 1’31.900 the fastest of all riders across the three days, as he tested a new engine configuration.
“We were able to understand the bike a little better today and the fantastic weather conditions certainly helped. It was a pleasant surprise when we got up this morning and it allowed us to work well,” said Stoner. “I’m satisfied with this three-day test and with the new characteristics of the bike, in particular the extra traction in corner exit. It is still difficult to figure out exactly the best time to open the throttle, but we’re getting there and it is a case of more practice and improving the set-up.”
Hayden, whose 1’32.805 was the third quickest lap of the final day, was also content with what had been achieved.
“We worked on confirming a few things today and I think we found what we were looking for,” he said. “I like the changes we’ve introduced to the bike; the power delivery is definitely more progressive although we still need to find the ideal setting for it. I’m happy – I think we’re on the right track and have had three important days here that should help us make a lot of progress in the next test, and close the gap to the front guys down even more.”