Capirossi sorry for crew after round one crash

Tuesday, 14 April 2009

After crashing out at Qatar Loris Capirossi felt sorry for his team as Suzuki’s hard work over the winter was undone in the Arabian desert. His team-mate Chris Vermeulen lifted spirits somewhat with a seventh place finish.

Rizla Suzuki’s veteran Italian rider Loris Capirossi had a night to forget at the Commercialbank Grand Prix of Qatar on Monday, as his twentieth season in the World Championship started with a DNF due to a high-speed crash.

Commencing the re-scheduled premier class battle from fifth on the grid in fine style Capirossi was up into second place by the first corner and held his ground over the first couple of laps.

As the race progressed his front tyre grip apparently dropped dramatically just seven laps in and he was lucky to walk away uninjured from the spectacular accident - as he lost the front-end of the GSV-R Suzuki which has improved so much over the winter.

A repentant Capirossi reflected, “I feel really sorry for the whole team, because all winter we have worked so hard and have gone quite well, so this was hard to take. It was really strange today because our practice has been good, but in this evening’s warm-up I had a big problem with chatter, this hadn’t happened all weekend and then during the race it was the same.”

“The front tyre didn’t work like normal either, I had done 25 to 30 laps on the same tyre with no problems and the feeling had always been good, but today after just five laps it felt like it was destroyed! This race is over now and we have to concentrate on the next one and find out why the things that happened today occurred.”

Capirossi’s boss, Rizla Suzuki Team Manager Paul Denning, was left searching for answers about the behaviour of the bike and the tyres, even though Chris Vermeulen had finished in seventh place, stating, “Without doubt it was the right thing for MotoGP to stay on and race here at Qatar tonight, but unfortunately our bike worked quite differently than it had done all weekend for both riders.”

“We suffered from a serious lack of front grip and some bad vibration which restricted both the guys. Clearly some of our competitors were far less affected by the different conditions and our team - and factory - will be working very hard to understand the difference in performance between tonight and the rest of the weekend.”