Australian Grand Prix
Phillip Island Circuit, Australia - Qualifying Practice
DIFFICULT QUALIFYING SESSION FOR PRAMAC D’ANTIN
MOTOGP
 ALEX
HOFMANN finished with the 17th fastest laptime at the end
of a difficult qualifying session at the Australian Gran Prix.
The German rider, who had problems with all of his qualifying
tires, wasn’t able to complete a full, fast lap, but
is confident in his consistent race pace to score points once
again.
His team mate, JOSE LUIS CARDOSO, ended the day in 19th, and
suffered from the same problems as HOFMANN. Nevertheless,
he is looking forward to getting a decent result tomorrow.
The start of the race is scheduled tomorrow at 15:00 local
time, one hour later than normal. (GMT+10, CET+8).
ALEX HOFMANN #66 (17th - 1’31.676):
“I am not satisfied. The DUNLOP Qualifying tires I had
were finished before I could complete a fast lap. I couldn’t
push to improve my times because the tires didn’t last.
My best laptime this afternoon is roughly the same as I obtained
this morning with the race tires and this validates my position
on the starting grid. Anyway, once again I have a consistent
race pace and for the race I will be ready to fight and finish
in the points. We did a good job today in spite of some problems
we had, and tomorrow we need to concentrate on getting a good
start.”
JOSED LUIS CARDOSO #30 (19th - 1’32.870):
“I wasn’t able to stop the clock again, unlike
this morning’s laptimes, and I don’t know why.
I am not happy because we had problems with all of our tires,
both the race tire and the qualifying one. We are too far
from the other riders, and I just couldn’t accelerate
like I wanted to because the bike was sliding everywhere.
I’m hoping for a lot of luck tomorrow.”
EMANUELE MARTINELLI – Track Engineer for Alex
Hofmann: “We worked very well with the race
tires in the earlier free practice sessions, but not with
the qualifying tires, and that didn’t allow us to finish
the laps that counted. The aim for these two days was to control
the high temperatures of our tires because of the amount spin
we are experiencing here. We are doing alright with race tires,
and the adjustments we made to the suspension and chassis
were useful for us in order to have a good pace race.”
Classification
1. Nicky Hayden 1’29.020
2. Shinya Nakano 1’29.258
3. Valentino Rossi 1’30.471
4. Kenny Roberts Jr. 1’30.716
5. Colin Edwards 1’30.719
17. Alex Hofmann 1’31.676
18. James Ellison 1’31.998
19. Jose Luis Cardoso 1’32.870
Conditions: Dry / Air: 17°c / Ground: 25°c / Humidity:
25%
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