Ready for the 2nd half season The Brno event, last race of the 1st half season, provides the Team Yamaha Motor France – Ipone with some good reasons to be confident: Norick Abe likes this track very much, Sebastien Gimbert did here some good tests recently and Shinichi Nakatomi is back in good shape. Norick Abe last year was 11th of the qualifying, and then had a very good start in race 2 which allowed him to be 2nd in the first corner and 4th on the finish line. Sebastien Gimbert did some good testing here last May, when the 2004 endurance World Champion ended up 2nd between Alex Barros and Michel Fabrizio. Shinichi Nakatomi is physically OK, after two difficult weekends because he was injured (broken radius at Silverstone, injured finger at Misano). So the complete team is now is great shape and will try to have the best possible result in the Czech Republic. “It is important for us that Norick Abe likes this track very much, explains team manager Martial Garcia. He had his best result last here year with 4th position. Sebastien Gimbert did some good testing here in May. He needs a good result now to get his confidence back. Shinichi Nakatomi did pretty well at Misano, considering that he was suffering. He has right now a huge program: He arrives from Japan where he tested for the Suzuka 8 Hours, then he races at Brno this weekend, participates at the 8 Hours on July 30 and races at Brands Hatch on August 6. This is a big workload.” Comparing 2005 and 2006: The Team Yamaha Motor France – Ipone has been participating to the whole Superbike World Championship since the beginning of 2005. Here is how we can compare the results of the team during the first half seasons of 2005 and 2006: