Suzuki duo with catching up to do

Italian veteran Loris Capirossi and Chris Vermeulen respectively qualified 1.391s and 1.411s off the pace at the Circuit de Catalunya on Saturday afternoon and were feeling the heat at the end of the day.

Loris Capirossi – 11th

"It has been pretty hard today. We tried a different setting this morning and although we improved a little bit it wasn't enough to put us in a good position for tomorrow. My impression is that our race pace is better than our qualifying and it was difficult for us to go much quicker on the softer tyres than we did on the harder compound. We will have to see what happens tomorrow, but the bike is working quite well and we have a good rhythm. The race tyre is working well so we are optimistic, but we are starting a little bit back so this will make it hard. We know we can do well off the line and have a good race."

Chris Vermeulen – 12th

"It has been really difficult today with the hot track temperatures and the limited amount of hard front tyres that we have. We did all of qualifying on the same front tyre and I did 27-laps so it was not ideal to try to do a faster lap on it at the end. We struggled a bit with grip and that's what we are going to have to concentrate on tomorrow to get a good life out of the tyres. The guys did a good job on the bike, we made a big step forward with the chassis and I feel a lot more comfortable on it than I did yesterday."