planetearth
There Can Be Only One
Number of posts : 3271
Registration date : 2007-02-03
 |  Subject: Hopkins 'a lot happier', Vermeulen 'disappointed'.  Sat Mar 24, 2007 11:43 pm | |
| - Quote :
- John Hopkins qualified his Rizla Suzuki GSV-R in sixth place for the Spanish Grand Prix, setting the Anglo-American up for a leading role in Sunday's 27-lap race.
"I'm a lot happier this afternoon than I have been throughout the rest of the weekend," said Hopkins, still carrying a wrist injury sustained in a pre-season accident. "We really got through a lot of work and made some headway with the race tyres for tomorrow. We did a decent run in the qualifying session and I'm feeling comfortable with our race pace. There are still a few things that we need to sort out, we'll look at the data tonight and improve on it for tomorrow. Going into qualifying I said I'd be happy with being on the front two rows, but when the time comes you always want more. I am quite happy to start there and the field is so close that a good start is essential. I need to get away well, through the first corner cleanly and then stick with the front group – we'll see what happens from there!"
By contrast, team-mate Chris Vermeulen was left disappointed by a poor 14th position that will see him starting from the middle of the fifth row. Nevertheless, Vermeulen was only 0.926 seconds behind pole-setter Dani Pedrosa, as Saturday's session saw the first 15 riders separated by less than a second on the timesheets.
"I'm really disappointed with how I qualified!" said the Australian. "I felt quite consistent and strong on race tyres during the session but I just didn't get it right on the qualifiers. We had a bit of a problem early on with one of the bikes, but I got on to the other one and everything seemed alright. I had two different types of qualifying tyre and the first one worked really well, but I felt like I didn't use it to its full potential, as I tried to get used to the extra grip. On the second one I just couldn't get the grip I wanted and although I did a similar lap-time I wasn't able to move up the grid. I now have a lot of work to do - again - but hopefully we can get off the start well and get a good result." Crash | |
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