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

Konica Minolta Honda Day 1 Report

The slightly wet track found by the MotoGP riders this morning made the first half of the free practice hour nearly useless for classification.
The morning rain refreshed the weather and the track surface temperature always remained under 30°C.

The KONICA MINOLTA Honda Team worked with the rider Makoto Tamada on an intense race tyres test which, after the afternoon session, led the technicians to a first idea of the tyres to be used on Sunday’s GP.

Makoto Tamada covered 45 laps in total setting the best lap time in 1’24.30” in the afternoon free practice session.

Gianluca Montiron – KONICA MINOLTA Honda General Director
“Even today, as many other times during this season, the classification shows several riders separated by a small gap; 12 in particular, are all enclosed in one second after the first two hours of free practice. We decided to test immediately a great number of tyres taking advantage of the dry conditions of the track, as the weather conditions will be changeable tomorrow as well. Makoto is not so far from the leaders and we will have to offer him the best conditions to reduce the gap, trying to invert the trend accompanying the team during the latest races.”

Makoto Tamada – KONICA MINOLTA Honda Rider (10° - 1'24.030")
“I’m quite satisfying of the results of the first two hours’ free practice of the German Grand Prix. The eight tenths gap from the fastest rider come from small problems I have when entering the first right corner after the straight and the left corner following the downhill back straight.
For tomorrow, I feel confident to be able to find with my technicians the solution permitting me to be more incisive. We worked a lot on tyres and I would say that the choice is nearly defined for the front tyre whilst for the rear one, we will have to well evaluate if the temperature will increase up to last year’s level.”