Promising first day for Rizla Suzuki MotoGP in Spain
 Rizla
Suzuki MotoGP has made a good start to the second round of
the MotoGP World Championship at Jerez in Spain, with both
Loris Capirossi and Chris Vermeulen improving on their times
from the test here last month.
Capirossi recorded the ninth fastest time on his Suzuki racing
debut in Europe, with a lap of 1’41.157 during this
afternoon’s session. Team-mate Vermeulen’s time
of 1’41.303 was fractionally behind the Italian and
gave Suzuki’s Australia star 12th position on the timesheets.
Today’s sessions were held in warm and sunny conditions
with air temperatures reaching a comfortable 21ºC and
the track surface heating up to 27. The fastest time of the
day was set by reigning 250cc World Champion Jorge Lorenzo
on his factory Yamaha.
Rizla Suzuki MotoGP has one final practice session tomorrow
morning before the important hour-long qualifying session
in the afternoon to decide grid positions for Sunday’s
27-lap race that gets underway at 14.00hrs local time (12.00hrs
GMT).
Loris Capirossi:
“It has not been too bad today! We have started the
weekend quite well and we have tried some different things
on the bike from what we used at the test here last month.
From my side I think we are really now starting to understand
what we need to do and for sure we have to improve tomorrow
– but already we are not too far from the first guy!
We have to keep working in a positive way, but we need to
improve the power delivery and also work hard with Bridgestone
to try to give us a little more grip.”
Chris Vermeulen:
“It’s been a good start here today. We’ve
changed some parts on the bike since Qatar, with some new
stuff from Suzuki and also the 2007 aerodynamics. It all seems
to be working quite well and it has made the bike very stable
in the corners. For me it was very different riding with that
bodywork on as it was the first time I’d used it in
over four months. It was strange to get on at first, but it’s
working well and we are consistently quicker than we were
at the test here. In the last run I did 29 laps on the same
front tyre and it performed well, so we seem to have good
durability from the race tyres. Tomorrow we will work on getting
a bit more speed out of the bike and hopefully we’ll
be alright for the race.”
Paul Denning – Team Manager:
“The results today don’t really reflect it but
the second round of the championship has started a lot better
for the team than the first round in Qatar. The positions
the guys are in today isn’t where we want to be but
the gap to the front has been reduced significantly, and whilst
we weren’t able to produce a headline lap on fresh tyres,
the pace of both guys on worn tyres was consistent which promises
good things for the race.
“We’ve still got a lot of details to work on,
but basically the bikes are working well and the riders are
able to concentrate on the settings that will allow them to
go fast on Sunday. Today was a decent start, but we will be
looking to step it up tomorrow and get the best out of the
qualifiers in readiness for Sunday’s race.”
Gran Premio bwin.com De Espana Day One Free Practice
Classification:
1. Jorge Lorenzo (Yamaha) 1’40.321: 2. Valentino Rossi
(Yamaha) +0.043: 3. Colin Edwards (Yamaha) +0.263: 4. Nicky
Hayden (Honda) +0.352: 5. Dani Pedrosa (Honda) +0.494: 9.
LORIS CAPIROSSI (RIZLA SUZUKI MOTOGP) +0.836: 12. CHRIS VERMEULEN
(RIZLA SUZUKI MOTOGP) +0.982:
|
