RIZLA SUZUKI MOTOGP HELD UP BY THE WEATHER AT JEREZ
24 March 2006 - Rizla-Suzuki

Rizla Suzuki MotoGP was delayed in its efforts to get the best from the first day of practice for the Gran Premio betandwin.com De Espana at Jerez in Spain, as heavy overnight rain all but washed out the first session.

John Hopkins and Chris Vermeulen were both looking to follow on from where they left off at the previous test but were hampered in their efforts to find the best set-up for their Rizla Suzuki GSV-Rs. The early morning downpour left the track very wet and Hopkins and Vermeulen only completed four and nine laps respectively.

The afternoon session was held in cloudy but dry conditions, with some damp patches. Hopkins tried some new settings to find the right direction for Sunday’s race and clocked a fastest time of 1’42.727 during his 27 laps to give him the 14th quickest time overall. Team-mate Vermeulen was only 0.374 seconds behind Hopkins as the rookie Australian recorded a best time of 1’43.101 from his 24 laps. He too tried many different set-ups on his Rizla Suzuki GSV-R and tested one of Bridgestone’s possible new race tyre options brought to Jerez. World Champion Valentino Rossi on a Yamaha set today’s fastest time.

Rizla Suzuki MotoGP will have a further one hour practice session tomorrow morning, which will be followed by an hour of qualifying in the afternoon. Sunday’s race will take place at 14.00hrs CET.

John Hopkins:

“I wouldn’t say this has been the best of days. We didn’t get anything done this morning because it was horrible out on track. This afternoon we were playing around with settings because we just couldn’t find the best set-up when we were here for the test. We will now re-look at what we had at the test and work from there because we know we can be a lot quicker than we were today. We’ve just got to keep chipping away and come back tomorrow as strong as we can.”

Chris Vermeulen:

“It wasn’t too bad today, obviously we would like to be further up the time-sheets but we used this afternoon to try out a lot of chassis stuff on the Rizla Suzuki - so it wasn’t really all about times. We also tried a new Bridgestone tyre and some different electronics settings. The track was still a little patchy this afternoon so it wasn’t as quick for me as it had been at the test. Hopefully tomorrow we can work on a few more things and make it all a little better.”

Paul Denning – Team Manager:

“After the test we knew that we still had a lot of work to do to be more competitive at this track and the weather today has really played against us. Losing this morning’s session to rain meant that we had a lot to cram into this afternoon and because of that we didn’t really get the results we wanted from either rider. Even though we needed to move forward from the test, today has felt like a backward step if anything! We’ve still got a lot of work to do tomorrow to get ourselves in a better position for the Grand Prix on Sunday.”

Gran Premio betandwin.com De Espana Free Practice Classification:

1. Valentino Rossi (Yamaha) 1’41.613: 2. Loris Capirossi (Ducati) +0.012: 3. Daniel Pedrosa (Honda) +0.185: 4. Sete Gibernau (Ducati) +0.185: 5. Shinya Nakano (Kawasaki) +0.326: 6. Marco Melandri (Honda) +0.495: 7. Colin Edwards (Yamaha) +0.653: 8. Nicky Hayden (Honda) +0.663: 9. Randy De Puniet (Kawasaki) +0.842: 10. Toni Elias (Honda) +0.905: 14. JOHN HOPKINS (RIZLA SUZUKI MOTOGP) +1.114: 16. CHRIS VERMEULEN (RIZLA SUZUKI MOTOGP) +1.488:

www.rizla-suzuki.co.uk

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