Turkish Grand Prix, Istanbul Park
Practice, Friday April 28 2006
DUCATI MEN MAKE PROMISING START
Ducati riders Loris Capirossi and Sete Gibernau got their
Turkish GP weekend underway with promising first-day performances
at Istanbul Park, placing seventh and ninth fastest, just
a few tenths off provisional 'pole position'. In cool, overcast
conditions the pair began laying the groundwork for Sunday's
race, round three of the 17-event World Championship, by working
on machine balance for this fast, undulating and challenging
racetrack.
Capirossi, making his first appearance here after missing
last year's inaugural Turkish GP through injury, ended the
two sessions just 0.432 seconds down on fastest man Nicky
Hayden, while Gibernau was only 0.656 seconds down, riding
the Desmosedici GP6 for the first time at Istanbul.
LORIS CAPIROSSI, 7th fastest, 1m 54.055s
"I'm happy. This is my first time here but my team and
my engineers gave me telemetry from last year which I studied
at home, so I just had to learn where to put my wheels. It's
a nice track, very up and down and with many changes of direction
where the track suddenly drops away. It looked easy on paper
but in reality it's more complicated! Anyway, I like it and
quickly got into it. We already made some setting changes
and tried some tyres. Tomorrow we'll keep on working and,
of course, I can improve. It's impossible to learn the track
well enough in two hours to be fastest.
"The tarmac is quite slippery, so we are working hard
with Bridgestone and hoping it won't rain tomorrow because
that will make things very hard for us if it's dry on Sunday.
I'm very close to the front, one tenth faster and I'd be third,
I lost some time going into the last turn a bit too fast.
Anyway, I'm happy and I'm convinced we can be competitive
on Sunday.
"Before coming here I thought the first and the third
corners would be the most difficult, I was wrong about the
first but the third, which comes after a fast right, where
you need to change direction while going down a steep hill,
really is hard. The most difficult point is the triple lefthander,
it's bumpy and so fast that's easy to make a mistake and lose
half a second."
SETE GIBERNAU, 9th fastest, 1m 54.279s
"That wasn't so bad, we're all very close, mostly within
half a second. We're trying to find a good balance and I think
everyone in the team, at Ducati and at Bridgestone has done
a good job today. We're fast in some sections, we're just
losing a bit in the areas where there's hard braking. We tried
two different directions today and I think we've now found
a good direction, so all we need to do is put everything together
and get out there and do some laps. But it looks like there
could be some rain tomorrow, so that could make it difficult
for everyone because we definitely need more dry laps."
Temperatures: Ambient: 20 degrees. Track: 27 degrees
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