SUPERB FIRST DAY AT DONINGTON FOR TEAM SUZUKI MOTOGP
22 July 2005 - Suzuki Racing

Team SUZUKI MotoGP racers John Hopkins and Kenny Roberts Jr both had their best first day results of the season at the betandwin.com British Grand Prix from Donington Park in England.

Hopkins (1’30.089, 36 laps) finished in third place overall with team-mate Roberts Jr (1’30.494, 34 laps) close behind in seventh. Both racers set their quickest times in this morning’s free practice session which was held in cool but dry conditions.

None of the top-ten riders were able to better their times this afternoon as the second session was marred by fine rain that left the track surface very greasy. Yamaha’s Colin Edwards set today’s fastest time with World Champion Valentino Rossi second.

Team SUZUKI MotoGP will have another practice session tomorrow morning followed by an hour of qualifying in the afternoon. Sundays’ race will be round nine of the MotoGP World Championship and gets underway at 15.30 local time (16.30CET).

John Hopkins:

“Basically I’ve had a pretty decent day. We’ve been trying to run through some tyres and find what we’re going to use as a race tyre. We are still a bit in-between tyres at the moment and I think we need it to be either a little bit hotter or a little bit colder - but we’ll see how it goes.

“We ended up alright on the day and it feels good to be at my ‘home away from home’ GP and to get back on track. I really enjoy Donington, I would say it’s probably one of my favourites because everything is just really flowing. I enjoy it a lot, so hopefully we can continue progressing and get that top-five finish we’ve always wanted.”

Kenny Roberts Jr:

“In the second session our timing was off. When it was dry we were inside and when it was misting we were outside. We were kind of unlucky with the circumstances not to be able to make some changes to the GSV-R and see if they were the correct way or not. But it looks like it’s going to be wet tomorrow and possibly for Sunday. We should have a good wet base and hopefully the Bridgestone tyres will work as well as they did the last time we had a wet race, and we should be competitive. This morning the bike was not so bad and we were in the top-ten and hopefully this weekend we will have a little bit of luck in our direction.

Paul Denning – Team Manager:

“Despite the great British Summer, Team SUZUKI MotoGP has had a good day at Donington Park with John and Kenny both running competitively and John putting the Suzuki GSV-R in the top-three overall.

“Bridgestone has worked hard again this weekend to bring new development tyres which we hope will enable us to be consistent over the race distance. Because of the disruption from the weather in the second session we haven’t been able to verify which one of the compounds will take us the race distance and give us enough grip, but we have another session tomorrow to work on that.

“Both riders seem to enjoy the circuit and for John it is his second home Grand Prix in succession. He seems to be going as hard – if not harder – than he did at Laguna!

“It’s great to be supported this weekend by former World Champion Kevin Schwantz, who pretty much owned this circuit in the early nineties and also by Mr Imada, Head of Suzuki Racing Department. Hopefully with their additional support this weekend we will turn in a decent result.”

Combined Free Practice Classification

1. Colin Edwards (Yamaha) 1''29.960: 2. Valentino Rossi (Yamaha) +0.025: 3. JOHN HOPKINS (TEAM SUZUKI MOTOGP) +0.138: 4. Alex Barros (Honda) +0.158: 5. Marco Melandri (Honda) +0.348: 6. Sete Gibernau (Honda) +0.438: 7. KENNY ROBERTS JR (TEAM SUZUKI MOTOGP) +0.534: 8. Troy Bayliss (Honda) +0.601: 9. Nicky Hayden (Honda) +0.620: 10. Loris Capirossi (Ducati) +0.637:

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