British Grand Prix (Donington Park)
Qualifying session
DIFFICULT QUALIFYING FOR BOTH PRAMAC D’ANTIN
RIDERS IN DONINGTON
 Pramac
d’Antin riders Alex Barros and Alex Hofmann braved the
second of today’s two practice sessions in preparation
for tomorrow’s British GP, the eighth championship appointment
of this 2007 season.
Today’s weather conditions were more favourable than
yesterday but this wasn’t enough to help the ‘Portacolori’
Italo-Spanish team that will start tomorrow’s GP from
the fifth row of the grid when the red lights are extinguished.
Brazilian Barros had some bad luck, even if he had a good
feeling with his race set-up, he wasn’t able to utilise
fully the Bridgestone qualifying tyres and could not obtain
a strong position on the starting grid because of some technical
difficulties.
For Hofmann, the British GP will be a difficult race as the
German rider still searches for a good feeling with his bike.
Alex Barros (1’30.071 on race tyres –
23 laps ) “Putting to one side my position
on the starting grid, I must say I’m quite satisfied
with my race set-up. Today we worked a lot on race configuration
and the results are not so bad: I have some difficulties under
braking, but in general I have a good feeling and my race
pace is satisfactory. Unfortunately, because of some technical
difficulties that we haven’t still identified, I wasn’t
able to exploit the qualifying session fully. However, I’m
not really worried about this and I will rely on a good start
that will hopefully help me to contest a competitive race.
Tomorrow morning, I hope we can use the warm-up because we
have a small modification to try that could help us to improve
further; nevertheless, we are following the right direction.”
Alex Hofmann (1’29.911 on qualifying tires
– 29 laps) “I’m not really satisfied
because I haven’t found the right feeling to ride the
bike. In the first two sectors of the lap, we are quite good,
but in the chicane I’m not as fast as I want to be and
I lost too much time this afternoon. We need to study closely
all the data at our disposal to really know what it is that
is not working as well and to be able to make set-up modifications.
For me, it is very important to have greater confidence and,
in this way, I could be faster, especially in the last two
turns, and to make up some lost ground during the race. The
last track session tomorrow morning will be a very important
point and if we succeed to perform then we have more possibilities
to get important results in the race. I hope that tomorrow’s
track conditions will be dry, so that during the warm-up we
will can try further setting solutions.
Official Time:
1° Colin Edwards: 1’28.531
2° Valentino Rossi: 1’28.677
3° Dani Pedrosa: 1’28.863
4° Nicky Hayden: 1’29.025
5° Casey Stoner: 1’29.061
14° Alex Hofmann: 1’29.911
15° Alex Barros: 1’30.071
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