Rizla Suzuki’s Álvaro Bautista recorded the 10th fastest time around the 5,403m Brno circuit in the Czech Republic during today’s first practice session.
Bautista (1’59.204, 18 laps) only used the harder compound rear tyre during the first three-quarters of the hour-long session and produced competitive lap-times. He was just about to test the softer option, but his plans were thwarted as rain began to fall and forced Bautista and most other riders to end the session early.
Loris Capirossi (P11, 1’59.216, 18 laps) was only 0.012 seconds behind his team-mate as he made a solid start to this weekend’s event. He too only used the harder compound tyres and is convinced with the softer version – and some adjustments to the electronic settings of the Suzuki GSV-R – he will be able to go significantly quicker over the weekend and move up the time-sheets.
Today’s practice was held in overcast conditions that produced light rain towards the end of the session. The quickest time of the day was set by Jorge Lorenzo on his Factory Yamaha.
Rizla Suzuki has one more practice session tomorrow morning followed by qualifying in the afternoon. Sunday’s 22-lap race is round 10 of the Championship and gets going at 14.00hrs local time (12.00hrs GMT).
Álvaro Bautista:
“It is good to get back to work after a short holiday and the first practice was not too bad for us. I started with the hard rear tyre and I didn’t feel like I had much grip and it felt like I lost traction a few times. We are working to improve this problem and in the last 15 minutes of the session we were going to test the softer tyre, but it started to rain so I couldn’t compare the different tyres. Tomorrow I hope we have good weather so I can test the soft rear and improve the grip to the back of the bike.”
Loris Capirossi:
“I think we’ve worked well today to check the two bikes to see which one works the best around here. One certainly has a better feeling, but we still need to work on the electronics side of things, because I don’t feel very comfortable with the throttle connection. Overall it hasn’t been too bad and I think the track is good for us and we can improve quite easily tomorrow to get much better times than we did today.”
Paul Denning – Team Manager:
“Both guys started on the harder rear tyre option, which seemed to work reasonably well at the start of the session, but became more difficult as conditions cooled off. Unfortunately neither Álvaro nor Loris got to use the softer rear, which the majority of the field were using to make better lap-times. We are not quite where we want to be, but we are also not too far away. We’re hoping for consistent conditions tomorrow so that the guys can get the absolute best out of the bikes and settings in preparation for Sunday’s race.”
Cardion AB Grand Prix Ceske Republicky Free Practice Classification:
1. Jorge Lorenzo (Yamaha) 1’57.215: 2. Dani Pedrosa (Honda) +0.541: 3. Valentino Rossi (Yamaha) +0.606: 4. Andrea Dovizioso (Honda) +0.658: 5. Nicky Hayden (Ducati) +1.071: 10. ÁLVARO BAUTISTA (RIZLA SUZUKI MOTOGP) +1.989: 11. LORIS CAPIROSSI (RIZLA SUZUKI MOTOGP) +2.001:
