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

Suzuki Day 1 Report

Rizla Suzuki MotoGP will be hoping to improve on its first day’s performance at the Czech Grand Prix in Brno, where John Hopkins and Chris Vermeulen found the going tough as they struggled to find the best set-up for their Suzuki GSV-Rs.

Hopkins (P11, 1’59.406,) will be looking to carry on from where he left off at the end of this afternoon’s session. His times steadily improved and he was able to find a good base setting for his bike that both he and his team are sure will be the right direction for Sunday’s race. His fastest time of the day was set on his final lap and he will be hoping to do significantly better than that tomorrow.

Vermeulen (P16, 2’01.074) suffered a number of problems including damaging his front wheel when he hit a kerb early on in the morning session. The rookie Australian then encountered a vibration problem in the afternoon, which his team will be hoping to combat in time for tomorrow’s qualifying and Sunday’s race.

Today’s practice sessions were held in warm and dry conditions with air temperatures reaching 27°C. The fastest time of the day was set by reigning World Champion Valentino Rossi.

Rizla Suzuki MotoGP has one further practice session tomorrow morning before the hour long qualifying in the afternoon. Sunday’s race is round 12 of the MotoGP World Championship and the lights will change to go at 14.00hrs local time (12.00hrs GMT).

John Hopkins:
“We were really just getting back into things today - getting back into a rhythm. We have worked a lot with Bridgestone today to get the best tyres we can for Sunday and getting the set-up sorted out. We have a few things to work on overnight but overall it was a pretty decent day. I can’t say we are happy with the 11th place, but we will be a lot happier if we get a better position tomorrow. We have just got to keep chipping away at it and work hard as a team. We need to come out tomorrow and get the best out of qualifying that we can.”

Chris Vermeulen:
“It’s not quite the start as we have had at the last couple of GPs, we have definitely got some work to do here! I have been to Brno once before but that was on a Superbike and I made a bit of a mistake this morning by not really knowing the track that well - I hit a kerb and broke a wheel. This afternoon we had a lot of chatter and my guys can see the problem and we have some ideas to try tomorrow. We hope we will solve it and that we can make a lot of progress.”

Paul Denning – Team Manager:
“Today has not been the best start we have had to a Grand Prix weekend – maybe we took a while to wake up after the summer break! We’ve got a number of issues to improve on but it is encouraging that John stepped it up to a decent level towards the end of the second session, and we now have a base setting to work on tomorrow.

“We need to find some solutions to help the riders in a number of places but the team will be doing everything they can to improve matters in all areas. There seems to be great potential in some of the new parts that Suzuki has supplied us here at Brno – the benefits of which we probably won’t be seeing this weekend. If we can improve some of the restrictions that are affecting the riders today then we hope that we can get the evolution of the GSV-R firmly back on track for the rest of the weekend.”