Capirossi on podium pace during first day in Catalunya
 Rizla
Suzuki MotoGP racer Loris Capirossi was the second quickest
rider during today’s free practice sessions at the Circuit
de Catalunya near Barcelona in Spain.
Capirossi led the way for a large part of the afternoon session
as he made long runs on his Suzuki GSV-R to test the durability
of his Bridgestone race tyres. He was the busiest rider on
track today completing 53 laps around the 4.7km circuit as
he worked hard with his crew to find the most consistent set-up
for his machine for Sunday’s 25-lap race. Capirossi’s
best time of 1’43.023 was only bettered by 0.006 seconds
by local star Dani Pedrosa, towards the end of the session.
Chris Vermeulen (P6, 1’43.368) was equally as active
as Capirossi, as he too completed 53-laps of the Catalonian
circuit during today’s sessions. Suzuki’s Australian
racer used the two hour-long sessions to test many Bridgestone
harder compound tyres to gauge their durability in the higher
temperatures here today. As track temperatures rose to the
mid-40ºCs, Vermeulen was pleased with the performance
of his tyres and certainly has a good base setting to work
from tomorrow.
Rizla Suzuki MotoGP has one more practice session to find
the optimum set-up in readiness for Sunday’s race. Following
that the two riders have the always exciting spectacle of
an hour of qualifying on Saturday afternoon to decide grid
positions for Sunday’s main event. Round seven of the
MotoGP World Championship gets underway at 14.00hrs local
time (12.00hrs GMT) on Sunday 8th June.
Loris Capirossi:
“It has not been too bad today; we are quite pleased
with how things have gone. When the tyre is new we can set
some good times but as it drops off we struggle a bit. We
have a good idea for tomorrow though and we will try to modify
the chassis to stop this happening so much. We used a different
setting here today from what we had in Mugello because always
we try to do something to make the bike better. We know that
our rhythm when the bike is good is very good, but we have
to make the bike go as well at the end of a race distance
as it does at the start so we can be more competitive!”
Chris Vermeulen:
“This is a circuit I quite enjoy and Suzuki has gone
quite well here in the past, and we were able to continue
that today. Last night we had a lot of rain so the track started
out a bit slippery, but the team did a great job and the bike
worked well right away. We seemed to get the tyres working
well and I concentrated on testing a few of the harder Bridgestone
compounds this afternoon to see how they work in the heat
– and they did a good job. We still have a few steps
to take tomorrow, we need to find an extra quarter-of-a-second
a lap to be with the front guys, so hopefully we can find
that tomorrow and be right up there!”
Paul Denning – Team Manager:
“Loris and Chris have really pushed hard today and
the positions reflect their efforts. The GSV-R has also worked
well straight out of the box and as we saw at Mugello making
a fast lap time is not our problem. What has become clear
again this afternoon is that we still have some work to do
to maintain the front running lap-times when the tyres drop
down. Both sides of the garage have done all they can to get
lots of miles under their belts and test the durability of
the race tyres as much as possible. Hopefully with some refined
settings tonight we will be able to do some long runs with
both riders tomorrow morning, and be in reasonable shape for
qualifying in the afternoon.”
Gran Premio Cinzano de Catalunya Free Practice Classification:
1. Dani Pedrosa (Honda) 1’43.017: 2. LORIS CAPIROSSI
(RIZLA SUZUKI MOTOGP) +0.006: 3. Valentino Rossi (Yamaha)
+0.073: 4. Casey Stoner (Ducati) +0.082: 5. Alex de Angelis
(Honda) +0.216: 6. CHRIS VERMEULEN (RIZLA SUZUKI MOTOGP) +0.351:
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