Rizla Suzuki Racers To Start From Third & Fourth Row At Misano
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Aug 30, 2008
Rizla Suzuki MotoGP racers Chris Vermeulen and Loris Capirossi will start from the third and fourth rows respectively, after their promising practice performances didn’t materialise into good starting positions at the end of this afternoon’s qualifying session.
Vermeulen (P7, 1’34.461, 27 laps) looked very impressive in this morning’s final practice session in readiness for Sunday’s race. He was the fourth quickest at the 4,226m Misano circuit as he continued to improve on his race tyre lap-times. He tried many tyre compounds to find the ones best suited to the bike and hot conditions at Misano, and was pleased with results both on performance and consistency. Vermeulen looks in very good shape for tomorrow’s race as he plans to emulate last year’s podium position.
Capirossi (P11, 1’34.926, 30 laps) made several changes to his Suzuki GSV-R after this morning’s session – where he again looked very competitive as he posted the seventh quickest time – but the alterations didn’t quite worked as planned and cost the Italian valuable time as he had to revert back to the original settings. Capirossi looked set for a much higher grid position, but was hampered on his last flying lap by traffic, leaving him with a tough starting position for the 28-lap race. The experienced Italian – who is making a record breaking 277th Grand Prix appearance tomorrow – is in a determined mood to get a good result.
Today’s qualifying was held in very warm and sunny conditions with track temperatures again reaching 46ºC. World Champion Casey Stoner will start from pole position as he scored his seventh successive pole on his Bridgestone-shod Ducati.
Chris Vermeulen:
“We’ve had quite a good second day here. We’ve changed some set-up things on the bike and tested quite a few of the tyres from our allocation. We tried some very hard compounds for these hot conditions and they seem to be working very well. This afternoon on qualifiers the tyre worked pretty well in the new chassis, but I never quite managed to do that perfect lap and unfortunately we didn’t quite make it to the second row of the grid. Having said that, seventh is one of my better dry qualifying positions of the season so we are definitely making improvements. My race pace is strong for tomorrow and I think with a good start we can fight for the podium!”
Loris Capirossi:
“I am a bit upset with my qualifying position because we found a really good set-up yesterday and we were not too bad this morning and we wanted to continue like that. But this afternoon was a bit hotter and we made some changes and on the qualifiers we struggled a bit. I am quite confident for tomorrow, it won’t be easy starting from 11th, but I’ll be aggressive early on and my rhythm with race tyres is really good so we’ll have to see what happens!”
Paul Denning – Team Manager:
“It’s been a very competitive weekend so far for the team and today’s qualifying results are disappointing in that they don’t reflect our true potential - we would have liked to have seen both bikes on the first two rows of the grid. Chris got very close to doing that with a great effort on his final qualifying tyre. He was second here last year – from eighth on the grid – and he has a lot of confidence this weekend so I am sure Chris will be looking to make the jump to the front group straight from the start. I think he has got the pace - and the tyres underneath him - to challenge for the podium.
“With Loris we tried a different direction this afternoon – which we thought would be better – but unfortunately it didn’t work and it took a while for him to come back to the high rhythm that he showed yesterday afternoon and this morning. That, combined with the fact that he had a lot of traffic on his final lap, resulted in a far from ideal qualifying result. He says he can do much better in the race, and he has the fire in his eyes, so we are expecting a big show from Loris tomorrow!”
