Pramac Racing British GP Friday Report

Weather Affects Silverstone Free Practice. De Puniet Tenth, Capirex Search The Good Setup

Round 6 of the MotoGP world championship at Silverstone has begun. As is often the case in England, the weather shuffled the cards between the first and second free practice, as rain and cold temperatures radically affected the afternoon session and made the times slower compared to the morning. Having crashed 17 minutes from the end of FP1, Loris Capirossi turned in a best time of 2:08.225 for the day, putting him fifteenth for the day. His teammate Randy De Puniet did better with a 2:06.573, ending the day tenth ahead of the Ducatis of Abraham and Rossi.

Marco Rigamonti - Ingegnere di pista Randy De Puniet

“Normally Randy is at home in the wet, but today the bike was much better at the end of the afternoon session, when the track was drying. Still, we experienced the same problems with the front that we’ve been dealing with for some time. We’ll work on the bike tomorrow, but we’ll keep the same setup that we used in the dry. In the wet, we still have to make some adjustments.”

Randy De Puniet, Pramac Racing Team

Photo by: Pramac Racing

Randy De Puniet - Pramac Racing Team rider

“Today’s weather conditions weren’t good at all. The track was half-dry and half-wet, so it was difficult to push the bike to the limit. At the end of the afternoon session, I tried lowering my time because the track conditions were improving and I was getting a better feeling with the bike. Tomorrow we must work to improve the bike’s setup in the wet, as the situation is already much better in the dry. I hope tomorrow’s weather will help us to get a good qualifying time.”

Loris Capirossi - Pramac Racing Team rider

“This morning’s session was pretty terrible! We had started well, but then I had a fall like the one in Barcelona, although today’s was hard enough to cause significant damage to the bike. The boys gave it 110% to get the bike ready for the afternoon. In the second session, the track conditions were terrible—wet in some spots, dry in others, and that’s not even mentioning the cold. We weren’t able to carry out the developments that we had intended to. We started with a similar setup to Barcelona, but the results we got are making us think we should once again change our way of working.”

-source: pramac racing