MotoGP 2005 Qualifying

Sunday afternoon will see the final race of the 2005 MotoGP World Championship and both Suzuki racers will be aiming to be involved in the traditional post-race firework celebration.

Following today’s free practice and qualifying sessions both John Hopkins (P11, 1’32.785) and Nobuatsu Aoki (P14, 1’33.393) are looking forward to the race, and will be doing their best to improve on their starting positions during the 30 laps of the Gran Premio betandwin.com Comunitat Valenciana.

Hopkins will complete a full set of Grand Prix starts in a season - for the first time in his career - tomorrow when he lines up on the grid at 14.00hrs CET. He is joined by team-mate Aoki – who is directly behind him on the start-line – and the pair will be looking to get a good start in front of what promises to be a huge and fanatical Spanish crowd.

Today’s pole position was set by local favourite Sete Gibernau – who also won a brand new BMW motor car for being the best overall qualifier of the year.

John Hopkins: “I would definitely say that we have found some stuff from yesterday to today. Our goal today was to be able to run consistently in the 34’s and we pretty much accomplished that. But now that everyone has stepped it up we need to be running in the high 33’s - that will have to be another step for tomorrow. The guys have been working really hard this weekend and I’ve worked hard to improve my lines as well. As far as qualifying went, we got into a good rhythm but I burnt out the tyre early on during my last lap and was just unable to make up that extra bit of time. I’m confident that we can get into the top 10 tomorrow and I’ll get a good night’s rest tonight and think about what to do tomorrow. I’ll make sure that I come out swinging!”

Nobuatsu Aoki: “Things went pretty well this morning and this afternoon. We have been adjusting small things and basically I kept the same settings as yesterday afternoon – which was a fairly good one. The race set-up is ok and I can run consistent times on race tyres. I was not 100 percent with the qualifying tyres though and was not able to find the limit with them and I lost maybe 0.3 or 0.4 of a second on what I should have been doing. I’m happy with everything else and very optimistic for Sunday.”

Paul Denning – Team Manager: “Both the guys rode to the maximum potential of the bike this afternoon and with another two or three tenths John could have been up to sixth or seventh place. Unfortunately he ran out of grip towards the end of the lap and couldn’t make up the time. In race trim we are not a close as we would like to be, there are the normal things that have been discussed all year that are holding us back and also at this track a number of other issues that will need to be resolved. We have made steps though this weekend and both John and Nobu are feeling more comfortable and confident with the machine that they have underneath them. We will be working right up until the end of warm-up with some further options and get both the guys aiming for a top 10 in the race.

“Nobu has done a great job this weekend – it’s always difficult coming back to MotoGP after a time away. He has been every bit as quick as John and I’m sure he will be determined to be the first Suzuki home tomorrow – although I have no doubt that John will have something to say about that!”

Search the site - Late Braking News - Forum

Bike Tests - Features - Wallpaper - Race Calendar

MCNEWS.COM.AU