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EVENT: Grand Prix of Qatar
WHERE: Losail Circuit, Doha, Qatar. Circuit is 3.343 miles (5.380 km), with 16 turns. Race is 22 laps.
WHEN: Sunday, April 11. It is the first of 18 events this season.
2009 RACE WINNER: Casey Stoner, by 7.771 seconds over Valentino Rossi
2009 POLE WINNER: Casey Stoner, 1 minute, 55.286 seconds
U.S. TV: 4-5 p.m. (ET), Sunday, April 11, SPEED (live). Moto2: 11 p.m.-midnight (ET), Sunday, April 11, SPEED.
THE AMERICANS: U.S. riders Colin Edwards (Houston, Monster Yamaha Tech 3), Nicky Hayden (Owensboro, Ky., Ducati Team) and Ben Spies (Longview, Texas, Monster Yamaha Tech 3) will compete in the MotoGP race. Kenny Noyes (California, Jack&Jones by Antonio Banderas) will compete in the Moto2 race.
•Colin Edwards: (About opening the season with a night race): "I'm the guy who wears a dark shield in the rain, so the worse I see, the better I ride. We could turn half the lights off, and it would be better that way. But I like the night race. I grew up racing Friday night motocross races under the lights every Friday night. And I was faster when I couldn't see the ruts. So night racing, no problem. I enjoy it."
•Nicky Hayden: "Finally the first race is here. We seem to have started later than everybody else, and I don't know if I could have waited any longer. Testing went fairly well. We met some of our objectives and still have a lot of work to do in other areas, but overall I'm satisfied. We established a good base setting in Qatar, and hopefully we can use that for the first race. It has been a couple of years since I made a good start to the season, but I feel in good shape, the team are fully behind me, and I can't wait to get started."
•Ben Spies: (About transition from World Superbike to MotoGP): "For me, I'm trying everything I can to be as fast as I can and be as close as I can and beat everybody else. And I think one thing that has helped me is when I came over, after riding the bike at Valencia and the Valencia test, I really kind of sat down and said what I think and what I thought I knew and do know how to go fast on a Superbike, it's not the same. I don't know how far I'm going to go and how the differences that are going to happen from now until three races in or after the season, or if there are going to be any more improvements. I have no clue. But I think at least what has helped me in my transition so far is that I came in and said I know I need to change, I know this isn't going to work, and I've got to figure out how to make it work. So I kind of just cleared the chalkboard coming in."