Good way to start the weekend for Randy De Puniet who concluded the first day of practice with the tenth fastest lap time of the day with just a bit over a second from the first, Casey Stoner. The Frenchman has worked well improving lap by lap his performances and tomorrow will look for more improvement to conquer a good position for Sunday’s starting grid. His teammate, Loris Capirossi, returned on track after missing the Japanese race due to his right shoulder injury and has finished the day in fifteenth position. The good news from the Italian is that the shoulder doesn’t bother him so much and should be ok for the rest of the weekend.
Marco Rigamonti – Randy De Puniet Track Engineer
“Today has been a good of practice for us. The most important thing for us is the feeling that our rider give us and Randy is quite positive. He has done a really good job achieving good lap times while all alone in the track. This means that he has the possibility to fight for important positions in both, tomorrow qualification and Sunday’s race. We will give him maximum support to be as fast as possible.”
Randy De Puniet
“Not a bad way to begin the weekend. In the last few races we were quite competitive since the beginning but than we couldn’t manage to achieve good result during the race. I hope this time it will be different and that Sunday we can conquer something important for me and for my Team. It will be important for us because in the next race, in Malaysia, it will surely be much more difficult to be as competitive as here.”
Loris Capirossi
“I was curios to see how my physical condition were and I have to say that I am quite satisfied. The shoulder does still give me pain and I am at 85 % at this moment. Not so bad but each lap I will ride the more painful it will be. Anyway I should be able to finish the weekend without too many complications. Bike wise this morning things seem good and in the afternoon we couldn’t improve as we expected also because the temperature was a bit cooler. Tomorrow things may change with the weather and this would surely mix the cards around.”
