Monday Afternoon Moto News - Speed Dating!

In our weekly bit from one of my favorite motorcycle rags, Road Racer X, we get our Speed Dating column. This week we have birthdays for Alex Debon, Noriyuki Haga, Kevin Atherton, Larry Maiers, Gianluca Vizziello, Alex Criville, Malcolm Smith, Joey Lombardo, Anthony Gobert, Ralph Bryans and Jonah Street. It is getting to the time of year that we also start to see anniversaries of the death of some great motorcycle racers in the line of duty; this week we lost Roger Reiman, Libero Liberati and Jimmy Adamo. This week also saw the beginning of the very first AMA Superbike race in 1976. This week last year was the first ever AMA night race - the 2009 Daytona 200. And, two years ago this Sunday was the day AMA Pro Racing was sold to Daytona Motorsports Group - maybe we should count that as a death as well???

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Valencia MotoGP: 250GP World Championship Qualifying

Some interesting qualifying in the 250c.c. World Championship class - Simoncelli is in second and Hiroshi Aoyama sitting in fifth! Of course, Aoyama only needs to finish in front of eleventh place to take the crown for the last two-stroke 250c.c. GP event. Alex Debon took pole position for the race, with Hector Barbera holding down the third position. It looks like - as long as we don't see any nasty get-offs - Aoyama will be the final champion in this class...

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