Kawasaki pair qualify at wrong end of Indianapolis grid

Another difficult day for `Team Green´ on Saturday saw American rider John Hopkins qualify in a disappointing sixteenth position for his second `home´ race at the Red Bull Indianapolis Grand Prix, whilst Anthony West will have to get away from the very back of the grid on Sunday.

John Hopkins - sixteenth

`It was like starting all over again today, as the conditions were very different to the rain we had yesterday. I was struggling a lot this morning, as well as most of the afternoon, and our lap time was not anywhere near where we needed it to be. Then with 20-minutes of the afternoon session to go, we tried a front tyre that we don´t tend to use that often on our bike and in just one outing we reduced our lap time by half a second. Unfortunately we had to switch our focus then to our qualifying runs, and this left us just sixteenth on the grid. We have a few ideas for warm-up and it will be very important for us to get a good start to the race tomorrow. I´m actually pretty confident, as well as incredibly motivated, because this is my home round and there are a lot of American fans here. I just hope that the weather situation is consistent throughout the entire day, as this will be important while we´re trying to improve our setting.´

Anthony West - nineteenth

`To go from first to last in one day is very frustrating for us and it´s certainly not where we hoped to be. The track here is quite difficult to master, as the grip levels at different parts of the circuit are inconsistent and this makes setting up the bike quite difficult. I was struggling to get the machine to change direction and this track requires a lot of momentum through the tight turns, which we just couldn´t achieve today. We also suffered with a lack of rear traction, a problem that haunted us earlier in the season. We have a lot of work to do overnight on our dry set-up, but if it rains tomorrow then we know from yesterday´s times that a good result could well be on the cards.´