FIM MotoGP World Championship Le Mans, France May 19 Friday’s Best Combined Practice Times: 1. Colin EDWARDS (Yamaha) 1:35.170, Michelin 2. Valentino ROSSI (Yamaha) 1:35.282, Michelin 3. Shinya NAKANO (Kawasaki) 1:35.447, Bridgestone 4. John HOPKINS (Suzuki) 1:35.461, Bridgestone 5. Casey STONER (Honda) 1:35.546, Michelin 6. Makoto TAMADA (Honda) 1:35.625, Michelin 7. Sete GIBERNAU (Ducati) 1:35.628, Bridgestone 8. Loris CAPIROSSI (Ducati) 1:35.662, Bridgestone 9. Dani PEDROSA (Honda) 1:35.796, Michelin 10. Marco MELANDRI (Honda) 1:35.935, Michelin 11. Nicky HAYDEN (Honda) 1:35.971, Michelin 12. Randy DE PUNIET (Kawasaki) 1:36.159, Bridgestone 13. Toni ELIAS (Honda) 1:36.191, Michelin 14. Carlos CHECA (Yamaha) 1:36.306, Dunlop 15. Kenny Lee ROBERTS (Roberts/Honda) 1:36.483, Michelin 16. Chris VERMEULEN (Suzuki) 1:36.904, Bridgestone 17. Alex HOFMANN (Ducati) 1:37.173, Dunlop 18. James ELLISON (Yamaha) 1:37.986, Dunlop 19. Jose Luis CARDOSO (Ducati) 1:38.509, Dunlop More, from a press release issued by Ducati Corse: STEADY START FOR DUCATI MARLBORO RIDERS AT LE MANS Ducati Marlboro Team riders Sete Gibernau and Loris Capirossi finished seventh and eighth fastest respectively on the opening day of practice for the French GP at Le Mans, after a day spent working on race set-up in the face of gloomy weather forecasts. Rainfall between the two sessions did not affect the two hour-long MotoGP sessions, held in cool but dry conditions. Capirossi was second fastest with half an hour to run in the second session, while Gibernau took some time to get used to the new section of the Le Mans circuit. The quickest time of the day came from Colin Edwards and is the new track best. Despite the overall track length staying the same as the previous version of Le Mans, at 4,180 metres, the alterations prompted Race Direction to call this year’s layout a new circuit. SETE GIBERNAU, seventh fastest, 1m 35.628s “We needed both sessions to be dry and we drew some good conclusions. We went all the way with tyre choices for the race, so it wasn’t too bad a day. We now know what we have but maybe we have to see what happens with the rain. If it rains then it will be a whole different story again tomorrow. The small change to the circuit has made a big difference and I am still not too committed on that initial part of the track. Slowly and surely we will just have to chip away at it.” LORIS CAPIROSSI, eighth fastest, 1m 35.662s “We tried new tyres in the morning and the afternoon but we still have something to test tomorrow, but nothing substantially different. The forecast says rain for tomorrow and Sunday, but even if racing in the wet is always a gamble, wet conditions could help us. Apart from the two Yamahas, which are very fast, the times are very close. I focused on putting together a lot of laps instead of working on one fast lap, to understand how the tyres work over a long distance.” More, from a press release issued by Kawasaki Racing Team: NAKANO TARGETS FRONT ROW AS DE PUNIET SUFFERS JEREZ FLASHBACK Kawasaki’s Shinya Nakano got his French Grand Prix weekend off to a flying start during this afternoon’s free practice at Le Mans, finishing the hour long session third fastest aboard his Ninja ZX-RR, as the top twelve riders were split by a margin of less than one second. While Sunday’s race is predicted to be dry, the forecast for tomorrow promises only rain during practice and qualifying. With this in mind, Nakano and his crew concentrated today on identifying a suitable tyre for Sunday’s 28-lap race. The 28-year-old Japanese rider evaluated a number of different rear slicks from Bridgestone, with positive results, but will leave the decision as to which tyre to race on until he’s had a chance to assess the track conditions on Sunday. Nakano is confident that, whatever the weather conditions during qualifying tomorrow afternoon, he has a set-up on his Ninja ZX-RR that will allow him to set his sights firmly on the front row of the grid. Nakano’s Kawasaki teammate, Randy de Puniet, overcame significant problems during this afternoon’s free practice session, to finish in a respectable 12th place, and less than one second behind Colin Edwards, who topped the timesheet on the opening day. After settling into a rhythm early on in this afternoon’s session, de Puniet was involved in a collision with Toni Elias, which resulted in the 25-year-old Kawasaki pilot crashing heavily and destroying his number one machine. But the Frenchman’s problems didn’t end there; in a rerun of his qualifying session for the opening race in Jerez, de Puniet misjudged his braking marker and ran on into the gravel trap after just two laps aboard his spare Ninja ZX-RR, incurring a ten minute delay as he waited for his crew to check over the bike in the Kawasaki pit box. Despite the problems de Puniet recovered well, quickly finding a good rhythm on the bike with 15 minutes of the session remaining. A switch to a different rear Bridgestone tyre on his Ninja ZX-RR allowed the Kawasaki pilot to shave almost one second from his previous best lap time, to finish today less than a second from pole position. Shinya Nakano: 3rd – 1’35.447 “The weather forecast is predicting a dry race on Sunday, but with rain during practice and qualifying tomorrow, so it was important for us to try and identify a race tyre during the dry conditions today. Bridgestone have brought a lot of new tyres to Le Mans, and I think today we tried them all. Every one was very consistent, which is good for us, but I think we will wait to see what the track conditions are like on Sunday before making a firm decision about which tyre to race. I like the changes that they’ve made to turn one since last year, but then I wasn’t a very big fan of the original first turn to be honest. For me the new layout is better, although it has been quite hard to find the best braking point for the new turn one. Overall, the feeling with the bike has been good today, but I think that we can find some improvements through small changes to the chassis and suspension, together with some tweaks to the engine management package. At the moment I’m having to change my riding style and lines through the turns slightly to get the best from the bike, but I think it is possible to improve the situation before the race, as long as we get at least one dry session tomorrow, which I hope will be the case.” Randy de Puniet: 12th – 1’36.159 “This afternoon’s practice session started well; after just a few laps I had a good feeling on the bike and my lap times were good, but then I had a collision with Toni Elias just after the Dunlop chicane and crashed, with the bike too badly damaged to continue. When I returned to the track on my spare bike I overshot one of the turns and ran on into the gravel trap. I lost ten minutes of the session while the guys sorted out the bike, and it took some effort to try and stay cool, and ride smoothly, when I did make it back out on track. At first my lap times were slower than at the start of the session, but then we switched to a different rear tyre and I was able to get back up to speed very quickly. It’s a shame I wasn’t able to continue with both bikes, as we’re running a slightly different engine specification in each, and I would have liked to have had more time to run a comparison between the two, to see which was best suited to the Le Mans circuit. Hopefully I’ll get a chance to do this in the dry tomorrow, but the weather forecast doesn’t look too promising! Overall I’m happy with the result today; I’m less than one second slower than the fastest rider and I’m confident we can close the gap even further tomorrow if the wet weather holds off.” More, from a press release issued by Dorna Communications: The fiercely enthusiastic French MotoGP fans put in a respectable turnout for the first day of practice at the Bugatti Circuit in Le Mans, ahead of Sunday’s Alice Grand Prix of France. This came despite the unfavourable weather conditions, which brought strong gusts of wind and spells of rain. Luckily there were dry conditions throughout the day for MotoGP and Colin Edwards finished the first day of free practices at the top of the classification, ahead of team-mate Valentino Rossi by more than a tenth of a second. Edwards’ time of 1’35.170 comes on the back of his third place finish in Shanghai, with the American showing both rider and bike to be in good form. Behind the Camel Yamaha double was an impressive start to the weekend for Shinya Nakano in his adopted home race, along with John Hopkins, Casey Stoner and Makoto Tamada. Sete Gibernau finished seventh with his Ducati partner Loris Capirossi, Shanghai race winner Dani Pedrosa and Marco Melandri all less than eight tenths of a second behind Edwards. The first practice sessions in all three categories also featured an assortment of run-offs, a large number of which came at the modified first corner of the circuit. Casey Stoner and Randy de Puniet were amongst those falling foul of the newly configured turn, electing to cut across the gravel to save a more serious incident after the turn was tightened during the off-season. 250cc In 250cc, Alex de Angelis has one hand on pole position for Sunday’s race. The San Marino rider was faster than current series leader Andrea Dovizioso and the Fortuna Aprilia duo of Hector Barbera and Jorge Lorenzo. The Mallorcan rider suffered a crash two minutes before the end of the session whilst pushing for the provisional pole. 125cc Álvaro Bautista put himself in the driving seat with a provisional pole in 125cc qualifying at the Le Mans Circuit. His lap of 1’45.280 was sufficient to put him ahead of Mika Kallio, Lukas Pesek and Mike de Meglio. Behind them sit Sandro Cortese, Fabrizio Lai, Mattia Pasini and Gabor Talmacsi, who suffered a crash in the final minutes of the session. There are five Hondas in the top nine positions. Aleix Espargaro, meanwhile, is out of Sunday’s race after suffering a fractured vertebrae. More, from a press release issued by Camel Yamaha: CAMEL YAMAHA TEAM RIDERS SET THE PACE AT LE MANS Camel Yamaha Team riders Valentino Rossi and Colin Edwards were the fastest two riders in each of the first free practice sessions on the opening day of action at the Grand Prix of France today. Rossi lapped the Le Mans circuit in a time of 1’35.288 during the morning, when Edwards was just behind him with the second fastest time, whilst in the afternoon the roles were reversed as the American set the pace with a lap of 1’35.170, followed closely by his Italian team-mate. The factory team have arrived in France in determined mood as they look to turn around their early season misfortunes, aided by the latest improvements to the YZR-M1 machine brought to this circuit by Yamaha. Rossi today ran back to back tests with a brand new chassis, designed to eliminate vibration problems suffered with the bike during the opening four rounds, and reported positive results. He will therefore incorporate the update into both of his machines tomorrow, when Rossi and Edwards try to repeat today’s success in the official Qualifying session. COLIN EDWARDS (1st; 1’35.170, 52 laps) “It wasn’t a bad day. We came here off the back of a good result in China, just brought the bike off truck this morning and everything seemed to work pretty well. Valentino is trying to fix a few things with the new chassis so we’re able to focus on working hard towards a race setting and seeing what we can get. I said yesterday that I’d know after four laps what my objective can be for the weekend and now I can say it’s to win. Why not? Since the test in Turkey we’ve hardly touched the bike and I’ve got a level of confidence and feeling that I know what the bike will do. This morning it worked really well and although the chatter started to come this afternoon when we got more grip, we were still able to push so that’s encouraging. We know this chassis has its limit but we can get it there pretty easily and at this track, where the Yamaha goes well, at least it should allow us to push as hard as anyone else.” VALENTINO ROSSI (2nd; 1’35.282, 36 laps) “I’m happy because both Colin and I are fast from the start and it seems the M1 machine is working very well at this circuit. Now we are in the first and second places so this is a very good result for our team and it gives us some confidence. I was very fast in the morning and in the afternoon we spent the time making some tests for the setting with the new chassis for tomorrow. This job is very important because they say it might rain tomorrow, but we have already found a good base, so I’m very happy about that. I like the new chassis and I think it will help us to go faster. It is much better for the vibration and even at this early stage we can see it has a lot of potential. Yamaha have always gone well at Le Mans so now we wait for tomorrow and see if we can keep it going.” DAVIDE BRIVIO CAMEL YAMAHA TEAM DIRECTOR “We’ve made a good start today with both Colin and Valentino. Both specs of the bike are working well so this is a very positive thing for us. Today was a good chance for us to gather some data in the dry because it looks as though it will rain tomorrow and we at least know we have a good base setting if it is dry again for the race on Sunday. Tomorrow Valentino will have the new chassis on both bikes and Colin will remain on the standard version but it seems both are working well so we look forward to seeing what happens tomorrow.” More, from a press release issued by Gresini Racing/Fortuna Honda: GOOD START FOR THE FORTUNA HONDA RIDERS AT LE MANS The FORTUNA HONDA riders had a positive first day of qualifying at the GP of France at the mythical Le Mans circuit in France. After a difficult weekend last time out at the Grand Prix of China, Marco Melandri and Toni Elias returned to work, this time on French soil, with the aim of finding the ideal set-up for their Honda RC211Vs. After a session which took place on a dry circuit, the FORTUNA HONDA riders are likely to find very different conditions tomorrow with forecasts predicting rain. MARCO MELANDRI (1’35″935, 10th): “I am quite satisfied with this first day of qualifying as we were able to try a lot of different set-ups. My cornering improved during the qualifying session and tomorrow I hope to continue the work we started today. We will look to try some new settings to try and improve my feeling with the front end tomorrow. I’m still not braking as I would like and that is making cornering difficult, but I have a lot of faith in my team who are doing a great job. We will find a solution tomorrow.” TONI ELIAS (1’36″191, 13th): “Le Mans is a circuit I like a lot and one I have always gone fast on, but I have got to find a good set-up to help me feel comfortable on the bike. We are still having the same problem we were having in China. I’m finding it hard to brake going into corners and at a circuit like this you feel it even more. However, I am still confident.” More, from a press release issued by Team Suzuki: Hopkins on the pace again at Le Mans Rizla Suzuki MotoGP racer John Hopkins carried on his good run of form during the first day of practice for the Alice Grand Prix de France at Le Mans today. Hopkins was consistently in the top five throughout the two practice sessions and his best time of 1’35.461 was good enough for fourth place overall, only 0.291 seconds off the fastest time set by Colin Edwards. He also completed a 20-lap run on one of the new generation Bridgestone tyres and was pleased with the result in readiness for Sunday’s 28-lap race. Hopkins also set the fastest speed of this afternoon’s session -288km/h – through Le Mans newly configured turn one. Chris Vermeulen is riding at Le Mans for the first time ever and used both sessions to learn the lines of the famous Bugatti Circuit. He improved on his times throughout the day and will be looking to better his 16th place from today during tomorrow’s qualifying session. Both of today’s sessions were held in dry but overcast conditions, but there was a constant threat of rain in the air, something that riders and teams were made acutely aware of when a heavy shower flooded the track at mid-day. Tomorrow will see Rizla Suzuki MotoGP have one more practice session and then an hour of qualifying in the afternoon. Sunday’s race is round five of the 2006 MotoGP World Championship and will begin at 14.00hrs local time (12.00hrs GMT). John Hopkins: “I’m glad it stayed dry through both of the sessions. We wanted to get the best setting that we can today, so that we can build on that tomorrow. From the start of the day we have been looking pretty decent and have only had to make a few suspension changes here and there. We have tried to spend a lot of time on the circuit and put in as many laps as possible to see what happens with the race tyre. Basically it’s been a pretty easy day and we’ve made improvements every time we’ve gone out. We’ll look to take further steps forward tomorrow and chase that first podium finish on Sunday.” Chris Vermeulen: “My first day at Le Mans and luckily we got two dry sessions as I need as much track time as possible. This morning I lost a bit of time but we were still able to get through a lot of things and I was able to learn the track. We have some ideas to change the bike for tomorrow and hopefully we can pick up some speed.” Paul Denning Team Manager: “The MotoGP class was lucky today as it avoided the mid-day rain and had two dry sessions. This was extremely beneficial to us as this is Chris’ first visit here. He is disappointed with his position but the potential for him looks positive and I’m sure he will capitalise on today’s learning curve. “John gave another superbly confident performance. He was always in the fastest group of riders and completed a 20-lap run early this afternoon to confirm the durability of one of the new Bridgestone tyres. He’s riding very well and the bike is looking increasingly competitive so we are looking forward to tomorrow, come rain or shine.”