Second row start for Capirossi at season opener

With improved Suzuki machinery at their disposal following a significant winter update to the GSV-R Loris Capirossi and Chris Vermeulen are hoping to cash in on their respective fifth and eighth qualifying places in Qatar.

Loris Capirossi – 5th

“It has been not too bad overall because we have improved a lot and went one second quicker than we did at the last test here. The bike is working well and we have found a good setting. We worked a lot on engine braking and mapping today and the whole team worked really hard to make everything happen. We tried to use all the time to its best extent and we are able to confirm that the bike is much better here than last year. I want to thank the whole factory for all the hard work they have put into the bike for this year. I think our qualifying is not too bad, but the race will be very hard and we will need to fight a lot to get a good result!”

Chris Vermeulen – 8th

“It has been a much better day for us today. We really got the tyres sorted out today and we know what we are going to be running tomorrow. We will certainly be using the harder ones - both front and rear. We found that the softer rear had a bit more potential for pure lap-time speed, so we saved a couple of those for the qualifying session. We were able to do three or four laps on each tyre and that suited me. It felt like the bike was working well and the last tyre was going really well, but I just missed doing a final lap by a couple of seconds. The lap that I did my best time on was not a perfect lap and I was hoping to get one more lap in and iron out those mistakes. Starting from the third row is a lot better than it was last year and I'll try and get a good start and stay with the front group and see what happens at the end of 22-laps!”