Ducati GP of Japan qualifying report

ROSSI IMPROVES IN MOTEGI QUALIFYING, HAYDEN NOT FAR OFF

Valentino Rossi

Photo by: Ducati Corse

The refining of the GP11.1’s setup for the Motegi circuit continued positively on the second day of practice at the Japanese Grand Prix. During the four sessions run thus far, Valentino Rossi and his team have focused mainly on the Desmosedici’s weight distribution. The Italian was seventh at the end of qualifying, and was satisfied with the manner in which they had worked.

As for Nicky Hayden, the American improved his performance session by session, and in qualifying, he barely missed the third row. His time isn’t far from that of his teammate.

Valentino Rossi (Ducati Team) 7th (1:46.467)
“We’re pretty satisfied, although we can’t celebrate seventh place. Still, I was able to ride the bike a bit better. We improved the setting again this morning, and I was faster in the afternoon. We’ve changed the weight distribution for Motegi, and now I can ride more naturally, though still not as I would like. Our goal was to manage to lap at 1:46.5, and as we were able to do that, I’d say we worked well. Also, our pace with the hard tyre isn’t bad. We’re not far from Spies and Simoncelli. We hope to get a good start, and then we’ll see. Let’s hope it doesn’t rain, as I’d like a dry race.”

Nicky Hayden (Ducati Team) 10th (1:46.763)
“We weren’t able to continue from the good start we had yesterday, even though our times aren’t too far from the second group. With the cooler track, I didn’t have the same grip, and I was spinning quite a lot on the edge of the tyre. This afternoon, we also picked up some chatter that I hadn’t experienced all weekend, which made it really difficult to go fast. We improved compared to yesterday, but not as much as we should have. We haven’t made a lot of changes to the bike, as we tried to keep it pretty simple and just chip away. We can’t be happy with tenth, and it’s going to be tough tomorrow, but hopefully we can get a good start and have a decent race.”