HOPKINS FOURTH QUICKEST AT A RAIN INTERRUPTED MUGELLO
02 June 2006 - Rizla-Suzuki

Rizla Suzuki MotoGP racer John Hopkins set the fourth quickest time overall during today’s free practice sessions for the Gran Premio d’Italia Alice at Mugello in Italy, as the weather again played its part at a MotoGP event.

Hopkins (1’52.082, 33 laps) used the majority of the dry periods to work on the best set up for his Rizla Suzuki GSV-R for Sunday’s race. He tried various different suspension and chassis settings before recording his fastest lap of the day at the end of the afternoon session.

Chris Vermeulen (1’54.106, 39 laps) is riding at Mugello for the first time and was hoping for two full dry sessions today. This was not to be as a small shower in the morning interrupted proceedings and then prolonged rain before the afternoon session – and constant small showers during the hour – made the conditions very difficult. The rookie Australian made good progress despite the weather and consistently improved on his times whenever he took to the track.

Today’s unusually cold and wet weather did nothing to dampen the spirits of the crowd that watched World Champion and local hero Valentino Rossi set the fastest time.

Rizla Suzuki MotoGP will have a further hour long practice session on Saturday morning followed by the all-action qualifying in the afternoon. Sunday’s race is round six of the MotoGP World Championship and the lights will change to go at 14.00hrs local time (12.00GMT).

John Hopkins:

“It was a bit disappointing today really because we couldn’t get done what we wanted to - set-up wise - because of the weather. This morning I tried to get a good feeling from the machine and work with the crew to get the best settings. I also needed to get into a rhythm myself as this is a difficult track. It’s somewhere that you can’t override the circuit or you can get really messed up. I’ve tried to smooth my style out and get the best from the bike. I felt good this afternoon but it started raining and there was not a whole lot we could do about that. We waited for the circuit to dry out and that meant we never got as many laps as we wanted. I set my best time on a Bridgestone race tyre at the end of the session that we had done quite a few laps on, so that is good for Sunday. I just hope that tomorrow is dry and we can work towards a good setting for Sunday’s race.”

Chris Vermeulen:

“I really enjoyed the track today. It’s my first time here and it’s a great racetrack to ride around. It has everything you want – from a rider’s point of view. It has fast corners, slow corners, elevation changes, fast straights, in fact a bit of everything. It is difficult to learn though and has a few blind places. Unfortunately we didn’t get a full dry session, but we did make a lot of improvements on the bike and I feel quite confident that we can make another step tomorrow.”

Paul Denning – Team Manager:

“We had a lot of work to get through today, both technically and with Bridgestone, and unfortunately due to the changeable weather conditions we didn’t manage to achieve it all. Having said that though, it’s still clear that the 2006 GSV-R is far more competitive around this track than the 2005 version was and, having found a better rhythm this afternoon, John was only 0.3 of a second off the fastest time, which is an encouraging point to move on from for the weekend.

“Chris’ bad luck, in terms of getting consistent weather to help him learn the tracks, continues. The second session was very sporadic, but he still managed to go a second faster in far worse conditions than they were this morning. Overall we can only see this as an encouraging day and hope that the Mugello weather turns into something more traditional over the next couple of days.”

Gran Premio d’Italia Alice Free Practice Classification:

1. Valentino Rossi (Yamaha) 1’51.238: 2. Loris Capirossi (Ducati) +0.361: Sete Gibernau (Ducati) +0.669: 4. JOHN HOPKINS (RIZLA SUZUKI MOTOGP) +0.844: 17. CHRIS VERMEULEN (RIZLA SUZUKI MOTOGP) +2.868:

www.rizla-suzuki.co.uk

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