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

Ducati Day 2 Report

Ducati Marlboro Team riders Loris Capirossi and Sete Gibernau were strong performers at the sun-blessed Sachsenring today, qualifying fifth and seventh quickest for tomorrow's German GP. Both riders showed supreme determination in this afternoon's frantically paced session during which the pole position record was slashed by almost a second.

Capirossi is still not 100 per cent fit following last month's Catalan GP accident but showed his race potential by running faster than anyone else on race tyres.

Gibernau has improved step by step after returning to riding yesterday after having his broken left collarbone plated on June 20. But the Spaniard is encountering unexpected problems here due to an inflamed nerve in the shoulder he injured at Catalunya.

LORIS CAPIROSSI, 5th fastest, 1m 22.329s
"I tried two different qualifiers this afternoon, the first I didn't like but the second was okay and if I hadn't made a mistake at the final turn I would have been faster. I tried again but on another fast lap I ran into traffic, so I wasn't able to improve. Anyway, fifth fastest and second row isn't so bad. As far as race tyres go we are okay, I ran a pretty good pace. In fact today was hotter than yesterday so I used harder tyres and was able to set my best times in race trim. We still have a few front-end problems which we hope to solve in morning warm-up. On the whole I'm happy with the way things are going here and even though I'll be starting from the second row I think we can have a good race."

SETE GIBERNAU, 7th fastest, 1m 22.469s
"The pain is okay, but I don't seem to have any strength in the arm, so I'm done through the last part of the track, from the very first lap. It must be a muscle or a nerve or something that got irritated in the accident, because the arm just falls down now, it's got zero strength, so after all the left-handers here I'm really struggling during braking for the last two corners. I don't know what we can do. If it's pain you can deal with pain but I don't know what we'll do because we can't do something like lock the arm. Maybe I'll just pray for the race because right now it's very difficult. Apart from that the bike and tyres are working good and the team is doing a great job. Things aren't bad apart for this problem."