Valencia (Spain), Friday 22 April: Ducati Xerox Team riders Régis
Laconi and James Toseland finished the first day of qualifying at Valencia
in eleventh and twelfth positions today as both riders opted not to make a
qualifying attack and instead focus on their race set-up.
Before the last five minutes of the one-hour afternoon session began,
the Frenchman and his British team-mate were both up near the top of the
timesheets and will concentrate on setting a good qualifying time in
tomorrow morning's second and final session.
OK, the result today is not too good, but we have been working very
hard for the race" declared Laconi. "I'm quite happy with the settings we
got with the bike, and before everyone else put the qualifier on I was
second. I thought I could risk not using qualifiers and stay in a high
position but the others all improved in the last few minutes and I slipped
down to eleventh, but that's OK. Troy was still faster than me but I feel
that we still have margin to improve. This track is very strange, the hotter
it gets, the tyre seems to work less well. Tomorrow for sure it will be
cooler and a lot better for the grip".
"We've got a bit of a problem with the suspension travel of the front
forks and we haven't sorted it out yet so the bike felt a bit harsh in that
session" commented James. "The tyre is not allowing us to get away with it
and as things go on the feeling gets worse. Everyone has similar problems
with grip so as far as race times go, we're all pretty similar. Lap times
are slower because of the temperature, tomorrow will be faster for sure.
The
less grip there is on the tyre, the less the suspension is allowed to work.
At the moment it's a bit frustrating because the times are that close and I
feel sure that when we sort the problem out, we'll be up there at the front".
TIMES:
- 1. Corser (Suzuki) 1m35.954s
- 2. Walker (Kawasaki) 1m36.731s
- 3. Chili (Honda) 1m37.003s
- 4. Neukirchner (Honda) 1m37.127s
- 5. Muggeridge (Honda) 1m37.146s
- 6. Kagayama (Suzuki) 1m37.159s
- 11. Laconi (Ducati Xerox) 1m37.566s
- 12. Toseland (Ducati Xerox) 1m37.648s
