• ROUND

• RACE DATE

• RACE

• CIRCUIT

• MOTOGP WINNER

•                 
  Round
                  
  15
                

•                 
  Race Date
                  
  24/09/2006
                

•                 
  Race
                  
  Japanese Grand Prix
                

•                 
  Circuit
                  
  Motegi
                

•                 
  MotoGP Winner
                  
  Loris Capirossi
                

The MotoGP season traditionally has a summer break to allow teams and staff to refresh from the travel and the work load, but in reality this doesn’t happen for technicians and designers are constantly working towards a better, faster motorcycle to race. This is the very nature of prototype racing where in the 2006 season you could install a new engine after every practice meaning teams could use as good as six engines over a weekend if they wanted to such was the drive for faster, better, quicker.

The 2006 summer break was fruitful for Ducati who promptly won the first race of the second half of the season with Loris Capirossi beating the reigning world champion, Valentino Rossi at Brno in the Czech Republic.

“The championship is still on.” Said Ducati Team Principal Livio Suppo. The race was now on to claw back valuable points that Capirossi lost mid season following a brutal crash that left him battered and bruised and struggling for points.

Onto a trio of back to back races in Asia with Loris taking a second at the Malaysian Grand Prix after a titanic battle with Rossi that went to the last lap and then seventh at the rollercoaster track of Philip Island in Australia.

The Japanese Grand Prix at the Motegi circuit is always a stand out race of the MotoGP year for the pride of the Japanese manufacturers is never so apparent than to battle for the win at hime in front of the big bosses and loyal fans. However this only spurred on Capirossi in qualifying as he sped to the pole position with his Ducati GP6 by over a quarter of a second.

Race day in Japan 2006 was, sunny,dry and warm with the red Ducati speeding off the start line to lead into the first corner and cope with huge pressure from fellow Italian Marco Melandri who refused to let the number 65 get too far ahead.

Capirossi had taken a tyre choice that was different from the others in that he had a hard compound Bridgestone front tyre and a medium compound rear, different to all the other front runners who had a medium compound front tyre. Motegi is a circuit that is brutal for the riders because of the stop/start nature of the track necessitating huge braking forces to be applied through the front wheel, but Capirossi had gone for the harder front that would arguably be not as quick at the start of the race, but better at the end

The Ducati GP6 with Capirossi was imperious that day in Japan, leading every single metre of the 24 lap race. From start to finish the number 65 had clear track in front of it to take the victory by not only five seconds ahead of Valentino Rossi’s Yamaha but to set himself in the record books with one of his finest ever victories.

Capirossi had also done the double by winning the 2005 and now 2006 MotoGP race at Motegi before brilliantly making the hat trick by also winning the 2007 race too with the GP7 800cc Ducati.

This bike was wheeled out of Parc Ferme and returned to the Ducati Marlboro Team garage before being crated back to Europe for the Portuguese Grand Prix at Estoril three weeks later. With a new surface laid down that didn’t gel at all with the Bridgestone tyres, the team then move don to the final race of the 2006 season at Valencia in Spain.

This Ducati GP6 also took part in that historic weekend that saw Ducati’s freshly crowned World Superbike Champion Troy Bayliss stand in for the Marlboro Ducati regular team mate to Capirossi, Sete Gibernau. In one of the most incredible race weekends in MotoGP history, Bayliss won the race with Capirossi making it a Ducati 1-2 in second while Nicky Hayden took the World title following a season of ups and downs, but moreover consistency. There was not a dry eye in the house.

Although an overwhelming 16 out of the 21 bikes on the grid are from Japanese manufacturers, Ducati proved to be extremely popular with the Japanese crowds. Due to his win at Motegi the previous year, Capirossi was hailed as a hero in Japan even before his dominating 2006 win!

The weekend was off to a great start for Capirossi as he qualified in pole position, beating Rossi to the top spot by 0.267 seconds and beating his own pole position time from the previous year by 0.639 seconds. Gibernau lined up on the 2nd row of the grid putting Ducati in a very strong overall position ahead of race day.

Capirossi dominated the race from start to finish, leading every single lap.