BIG IMPROVEMENTS FOR RIZLA SUZUKI MOTOGP AT JEREZ
25 March 2006 - Rizla-Suzuki

Rizla Suzuki MotoGP racers Chris Vermeulen and John Hopkins qualified in 11th and 12th places respectively for tomorrow’s Gran Premio betandwin.com De Espana, after today’s qualifying session at Jerez in Spain.

Hopkins and Vermeulen both made dramatic improvements today and now have a clearer direction for Sunday’s 27 lap race. They worked with their own teams on chassis settings and finding the best Bridgestone tyres to use in the race. Hopkins believed he could have been further up the grid but just couldn’t find that one quick and smooth lap that he was after.

Today’s weather was a vast improvement on Friday’s, as bright sunshine helped the air temperatures reach 20°c and track surface temperatures were up in the high 30s. Pole position was set by Loris Capirossi on his Bridgestone shod Ducati.

The Gran Premio betandwin.com De Espana is the first round of the MotoGP World Championship and will get underway at 14.00hrs CET tomorrow. It will also mark the MotoGP debut for the new Rizla Suzuki team and a first Suzuki MotoGP for Vermeulen.

John Hopkins:

“I’d say that we concentrated a lot on race set-up today. Everything went really well and we have made some good steps forward for tomorrow’s race. Over the winter one of my goals has been to put in consistently quick laps and unfortunately I wasn’t able to get my head around the qualifiers today. I just couldn’t get in a fast lap and kept making little mistakes. This means we’ll have to start on the fourth row – which is a lot further back than we wanted to be – but I really hope we will do better in the race than we did in qualifying. I need a good start tomorrow and then not to let anyone get away from me, then see what happens.”

Chris Vermeulen:

“I am quite happy with today. We have made some progress with the Bridgestone front tyre – which really helped the bike to turn better. The crew worked really well today and helped me to find what I was looking for. This afternoon we used some qualifiers and managed to move myself up the grid to 11th. I was hoping to get into the top 10, but we’ll work on that tomorrow!”

Paul Denning – Team Manager:

“We’ve certainly made improvement both in terms of position and technical capability of the Rizla Suzuki GSV-R compared to yesterday. But we have still not ended up – particularly in John’s case - where we feel we could be. Chris did an outstanding job in his first qualifying session as a Suzuki rider and John looked set for a big improvement in his time - without question a top six place was possible - but a big mistake on his final lap meant that he couldn’t improve. We knew coming into this race that Jerez was going to de a difficult circuit for the GSV-R and that has proved to be the case. Nonetheless we have improved the bike’s potential over race distance and if we can get it to a much better level here then it’s likely that we will be in better shape elsewhere.”

Gran Premio betandwin.com De Espana Qualifying Practice Classification:

1. Loris Capirossi (Ducati) 1’39.064: 2. Sete Gibernau (Ducati) +0.221: 3. Shinya Nakano (Kawasaki) +0.462: 4. Nicky Hayden (Honda) +0.602: 5. Daniel Pedrosa (Honda) +0.670: 6. Toni Elias (Honda) 0.811: 7. Marco Melandri (Honda) +0.868: 8. Randy De Puniet (Kawasaki) +1.082: 9. Valentino Rossi (Yamaha) +1.096: 10. Colin Edwards (Yamaha) +1.117: 11. CHRIS VERMEULEN (RIZLA SUZUKI MOTOGP) +1.151: 12. JOHN HOPKINS (RIZLA SUZUKI MOTOGP) +1.276:

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