2006 Australian Superbike Championship (YMF Loan) - Round Four - Queensland Raceway

Kawasaki Day 1 Report

Shinya Nakano and Randy de Puniet remain confident that Sachsenring is a circuit that suits the characteristics of their Ninja ZX-RR MotoGP machines, despite the fact that set-up problems during today's free practice sessions left both Kawasaki pilots further down the timesheet than expected.

Nakano finished this afternoon's free practice session thirteenth fastest, while his Kawasaki teammate, de Puniet, was one place further back in fourteenth.

While yesterday's pre-event promotions were blessed with sunshine and 30-degree temperatures, overcast conditions and sporadic rain showers greeted Nakano and De Puniet as they arrived at the Sachsenring circuit this morning for the opening day of practice ahead of Sunday's 30-lap race.

With track temperatures lower than predicted, Nakano and de Puniet struggled to find a set-up to suit the conditions during today's two practice sessions, with both riders complaining of a lack of rear traction that stopped them from carrying the high corner speed necessary for a fast lap of the tight and twisty Sachsenring circuit.

Both riders will revisit their chassis and engine management settings together with their respective crews tonight, but Kawasaki's Technical Manager, Naoya Kaneko, is confident that small changes to set-up will pay dividends tomorrow, when the track temperature is again expected to rise.

Shinya Nakano: 13th - 1'24.190
"We were expecting a lot better from today, but we've had a few problems that we weren't really expecting and we've ended up a lot lower down the timesheet than we were hoping for. We need to sit down tonight and look at changing both our chassis balance and also our engine settings to improve our situation. At the moment the power comes in a little bit too aggressively and this makes the bike a little bit nervous and causes some pumping from the rear going into the turns, which nearly caused me to highside a couple of times today. We have some options on tyre choice, as well as some ideas on how to improve the chassis set-up, and I'm confident that we will see an improvement tomorrow. I think some small changes will make a big difference, which, in turn, will give me the confidence in the bike that you need here at Sachsenring - especially for the downhill corners like the right-hander at turn eight."

Randy de Puniet: 14th - 1'24.582
"At the start of this afternoon's session I immediately saw a one second improvement in my lap time, but then when I started to push for further improvements that's when I started to struggle with the bike. Halfway through the session I made a mistake and crashed at turn one without injury, but when I got back on track with my number two bike I just didn't feel confident exiting the turns because the rear tyre would spin up as soon as I touched the throttle. Through the slower turns I just didn't have the confidence to open the throttle when I wanted to, as again, the rear would just spin up straight away. As a result, I was losing time through every turn, which is why we finished today only fourteenth fastest. Overall today hasn't been such a good start, but we will look at our set-up overnight to see if we can find a solution and I'm confident that we will see an improvement tomorrow."

Naoya Kaneko: Technical Manager
"Today both riders were struggling with the feeling and the level of grip from the rear of the bike, which meant that they were unable to carry corner speed, nor get on the gas as early and as hard as they would have liked out of the turn. Tonight and tomorrow we need to focus on finding a good combination of rear tyre and suspension settings for this track, in order to instil more confidence in both riders. At a track like Sachsenring, where the bike spends a lot of time banked over on part throttle, even a small improvement in this area can lead to a big improvement in lap times."