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HOPKINS SECURES TOP-10 START FOR SUZUKI AND HIGHEST PLACE FOR BRIDGESTONE Hopkins (P10, 1’29.231) secured his fifth top-10 start of the season after a hard fought session held in warm and dry conditions at Donington Park in England. Hopkins used his now trademark attacking riding style all afternoon to put his Suzuki GSV-R on the front of the fourth row. He was also the best placed rider using Bridgestone tyres. Kenny Roberts Jr (P16, 1’30.260) struggled all day to find the levels of grip that he needed to give his bike the competitive edge and will be looking to make a good start to tomorrow’s race and make up some early places. Pole position went to current Championship leader and reigning MotoGP World Champion Valentino Rossi. Round nine of the MotoGP World Championship begins at a different start time tomorrow. The red light will go out and the race will get underway at 15.30 local time (16.30CET). John Hopkins: “Basically we’ve got the bike to a pretty good set-up where we can run consistent times. We’d like to be a little bit faster at the moment on race pace but I would have to say that unfortunately the tyres are holding us back and we’re limited with what times we can do. As you can see, all the Bridgestone riders finished in a bunch at the end of the session. “Normally the Bridgestone qualifiers are really awesome, they’re good everywhere but unfortunately this was one track where they didn’t work as well. Right now we’re still struggling a little bit with grip but hopefully we can overcome that overnight, and go out and have an excellent race tomorrow.” Kenny Roberts Jr: “I tried hard during qualifying but nothing came in terms of feel, grip or lap time. I couldn’t really get any benefit from the qualifiers we used over a race tyre. I actually went out on a race compound at the end of the session and put in my fastest lap time! It’s a shame because normally the Bridgestone qualifier is one of its strong points but something in the Donington surface and the compound didn’t quite match.” “If it’s wet tomorrow I hope the Bridgestone’s work as well as they did in Shanghai!”
“John did a great job again, running a 29.6 on a race tyre early on in the afternoon. His crew have adjusted his bike in the fourth session to where I genuinely feel there is almost nothing left in the bike’s setting to get more performance. It’s turning well, it’s stopping well and it’s accelerating quite well. I feel that John’s capability is a lot higher than his position shows. “Normally we would expect to find perhaps a full second better performance on the Bridgestone qualifiers compared to hard compound race tyre, but unfortunately the grip was the same at this track from the qualifier or the racing tyre. “Kenny recognises the steps that the GSV-R has taken but hasn’t been able to take advantage of them at this track. He has complained about a lack of feeling and a lack of grip. We are working hard with Bridgestone to find the right solutions. “We will see what the weather brings tomorrow, in terms of wet, dry or in-between. Either way we hope it will work for us and Bridgestone and that we will be competitive.” betandwin.com British Grand Prix Qualifying Practice Classification:
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