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CAPIROSSI SIGNALS DUCATI REVIVAL AT ASSEN Two years after setting pole position for the Dutch TT in his first season with Ducati at Assen, Loris Capirossi today sparked hopes of a revival for the Italian factory with the fastest lap on the opening day of action at the 75th anniversary of the famous event. The Italian struggled to eleventh place in the last round at Catalunya, just seven days after his first podium of the season at Mugello, but his early pace in Holland suggests he can be back to challenge for the Italian factory’s second MotoGP victory in Saturday’s historic race.
“We are in a much better situation than we were at Barcelona two weeks ago but we need to work on bike set-up to get more out of the tyres,” said Capirossi. “The front is fine but we’re still trying to find a good rear for the race. I did my fastest lap at the end of the session on my number two bike with a race rear I hadn’t used before so we’ll test that tyre for more laps tomorrow. At the moment we’re not super-competitive in race trim but Bridgestone are working so hard that we have got a lot of new tyres to try here.”
Despite Capirossi’s late charge there is little doubt that the dominant force throughout the day was current series leader Valentino Rossi, who set the pace for the morning practice and most of the afternoon on the Yamaha before ultimately being bettered by his compatriot. Honda’s Sete Gibernau trailed Rossi for most of the day and ended up third fastest on the combined time sheets, 0.197 seconds adrift of the World Champion.
Alex Barros began his quest to repeat his 500cc victory here from 2000 with the fourth fastest time on ahead of Honda colleagues Marco Melandri and Nicky Hayden. Capirossi’s Ducati team-mate Carlos Checa, who finished second to Mick Doohan here in 1997, was seventh quickest, with Colin Edwards, Max Biaggi and Shinya Nakano completing the top ten. The only crash today in the MotoGP class came from Rubén Xaus, who escaped uninjured from a high-speed tumble that wrecked his Yamaha.
Sebastián Porto scored only his second ever dry weather victory at this circuit last season and showed signs of a repeat in the first qualifying practice for the 250cc class. Porto bounced back from a difficult start to the season to hold off the challenge of Jorge Lorenzo and Casey Stoner this afternoon, taking provisional pole position in a time of 2’05.530. Hiroshi Aoyama qualified fourth fastest to complete the provisional front row whilst his team-mate Dani Pedrosa, who leads the current standings by 27 points from Stoner, was sixth. Alex de Angelis, Héctor Barberá and Andrea Dovizioso complete the second row.
In the 125cc class current series leader Mattia Pasini continued his recent form by taking provisional pole position by just 0.003 seconds ahead of Mika Kallio. Pasini’s lap time of 2’12.742 was almost half a second quicker than the third fastest rider, Spanish youngster Sergio Gadea, whilst Marco Simoncelli completes the provisional front row. Thomas Lüthi, who is second in the championship by a single point, was tenth fastest.
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