Kawasaki’s Randy de Puniet and Olivier Jacque will start tomorrow’s Turkish Grand Prix from the third and fourth row respectively after qualifying eighth and eleventh at the one-hour long qualifying session that took place today at the Istanbul Circuit Park.
Despite the grid position achieved is not as good as expected, the Kawasaki Team faces with optimism the third race of the 2007 season after showing an important improvement on the engine and chassis side making the riders feel more comfortable and reducing the lap times as the sessions were progressing.
Randy de Puniet made today a huge effort after yesterday’s crash, not only as he had to catch up on his schedule but he had to overcome a huge pain in his right heel and hip. With better surface conditions than yesterday, the 26-year-old worked throughout this morning third free practice session to refine the race set up and checking again the softer rear race tyre option that yesterday left him with a good impression.
However, an increase of the track temperature in the afternoon made de Puniet and his crew go for a harder option as a consequence of an increase of rear sliding. Half way through the session, like happened in Jerez, de Puniet was the first rider to switch to the qualifying tyres in the one-hour long qualifying session holding the pole position until the last minutes. While the Kawasaki rider couldn’t improve his lap times with his other two sets due to the over-sliding, his rivals took advantage of their sets relegating him to the eighth position.
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