From a press release issued by d’Antin Ducati:

HODGSON AND XAUS REMAIN CONFIDENT

The dice have been rolled, and the grid for the first race of the season has been decided after an exciting final qualifying session in Welkom. The d´Antin MotoGP riders managed to refine the set-ups of their respective Ducati Desmosedici machines, and will go into the first race tomorrow confident in their ability to get a good result.

For the first time, the starting grid will be made up of rows of three riders instead of four, and because of this Hodgson and Xaus will be starting from the fifth and sixth rows respectively.

Reigning World Superbike Champion Neil Hodgson improved his Friday time by over two seconds, ending up in fifteenth place and knows tomorrow’s first MotoGP race will be tough, “Today I’m much happier than yesterday, I think we’ve made some good progress and to be honest I don’t think grid position is too important. At the moment we can’t think about this. The set-up for tomorrow is quite good, although there’s still some work to do in the warm-up, however I’m confident in our chances. Where would I like to finish? To be in the top twelve would be fantastic to start with.”

Rubén Xaus suffered a minor crash during the session, but with no lasting damage he could get back on the bike, and with a little strategy change took sixteenth spot on the grid, “I’ve got that bad feeling that I could have done more, but things weren’t necessarily all bad because I’ve discovered that I’ve got a good rhythm on my race tyre. I crashed when using a soft rear, because it pushed the front more and I went into the bend crossed a little. There were less than fifteen minutes remaining and I could finish the lap to return to the box. I went out on the other bike, but I hadn’t touched it all weekend and so I couldn’t improve my time. We need to keep our feet on the ground, but I’m confident and I think that tomorrow I can go out and have a good race.”


TIMES:

1st V.ROSSI 1:32.647
2nd S.GIBERNAU 1:32.682
3rd M.BIAGGI 1:32.919
4th N.HAYDEN 1:33.098
5th C.EDWARDS 1:33.111

15th N.HODGSON 1:33.977
16th R.XAUS 1:34.103