Pirelli tires just completed a busy weekend of racing on both the world and U.S. stages, in road racing and motocross. At the AMA Superbike series second round at Barber Motorsports Park near Birmingham, AL, the weather played a part in Thursday and Friday practice and qualifying, throwing rain, cold, high winds and even some hail into the equation, but the race days were great for this time of year. Barber’s reputation as a front-tire destroyer, due mainly to its relatively new surface still being abrasive and “green”, didn’t materialize as much as Bob Henderson, Pirelli’s North American Road Racing Coordinator, thought it would. “Our fronts seemed to work fine this weekend, so the track is getting more seasoned.” Vincent Haskovec and his Pirelli slick-mounted Team M4 EMGO Suzuki GSX-R600 provided Barber’s attendance record-breaking crowd with the weekend’s major battle, just like he did in his dramatic Daytona AMA Superstock win over the factory riders at the opening round last month in Daytona. But this time it was in Formula Xtreme, ironically the race that provided the least excitement at Daytona. Haskovec shadowed the factory Hondas of Jake Zemke and Miguel Duhamel just like he did in Daytona (with the exception of Erion Racing’s Kurtis Roberts who did not compete in the Barber FX race). The difference was that this time there was no Mechanical DNF to force him out. With three laps remaining, Haskovec made his move, passing Duhamel and moving into second place, then into the lead on the next lap, going under Zemke before Zemke answered back. Haskovec again took the lead on the last lap, but the ex-dirt tracker Zemke went past with both ends sliding. Haskovec bobbled the last turn honestly blaming it on his ill-timed “greed” to get past Zemke – forcing him to make contact with Duhamel’s bike on the run to the flag, but still putting him on the podium in third place, the first of five Pirelli riders in the Top 15. The Team M4 EMGO Suzuki rider added a fifth in the Superstock final, putting him in second place in the championship series, a single point behind Aaron Yates. Haskovec also raced his Superstock-spec 1000cc Suzuki in both of Barber’s Superbike finals, earning very respectable ninth and seventh places on Superstock-spec 17-inch wheels against the Superbike field dominated by 16.5s. The Pirelli tire-spec World Superbike Championship stopped at Valencia, Spain over the weekend for its third round, and former champion Troy Corser continued the reincarnation of his racing career, again sweeping both races on his Alstare Suzuki. Winston Ten Kate’s Chris Vermeulen and his Honda CBR1000RR claimed second in both to move into third place in points behind Corser’s Alstare teammate, Yukio Kagayama. One startling difference was the absence of Ducatis in the Top-5 lists of both races, the Italian bikes not having their best outings. Yet it was good to see the other major manufacturers represented in the Top-5 lists now that the factories have rejoined the SBK war. In Race One, it was Suzuki, Honda, Suzuki, Kawasaki and Yamaha. And Suzuki, Honda, Kawasaki, and two Yamahas respectively in Race Two. Following the weekend, Pirelli World Racing Manager Giorgio Barbier, stated, “This is the first 2005 race in which we have had all [of the classes] featured. We have two Superstock classes, one for 1000cc and a new one for 600cc machines, and the Suzuki Cup as well. In all, we have almost 190 riders to supply. [This year], some of our tires are also [street] products like the Diablo Corsa “¦ which are very important for us because we sell them, as well as racing on them. “So the biggest job was to supply the correct material to everyone, in every class, and avoid mistakes with the service. The traffic in our working areas was very heavy! In Superbike all off the teams have tested here a lot, and we expected that their attitude would be to test the different tires we brought to the race. But what we found is that they were more concerned with set-up, and finding out how much the grip changes between the morning and afternoon. So a lot of them just tested what they had used before, without making a lot of experiments with the new ones. So they almost all raced with an ‘A’ rear tire, but on the front they played a lot between the ‘B’ and ‘D’ solutions. Some of them made an adjustment from ‘B’ to C’ – for example Chris Walker and he ended up getting a podium in race two. That was a move to a harder choice and it allowed him to improve his performance. My dream was a Yamaha on the podium in race one, then a Kawasaki on the podium in race two. So it was a pity for Abe. In Australia we had a new ‘A’ front, and having had good results with it, we decided to bring it here, and that has now become the new ‘B’. It was good because Corser used it. So now we can compare the two possible ‘A’s so we can arrange which ones to use in each race of the season.”