Loris Capirossi set the fastest time on race tyres

Loris Capirossi is back with a bang at Brno. © Ducati Corse. Loris Capirossi worked hard throughout the first day to find a set-up that would allow him to get the best out of his Desmosedici, and although he believes there is more to come tomorrow, he is delighted because he was up front even though he didnt use qualifying tyres. The Italian's pace - no one was faster on race tyres today - puts the team in optimistic mood for Sunday's race, round 12 of this year's 17-round World Championship.

Loris Capirossi: "I thought it would be easy to find a good set-up up here but it's not been like that, so I'm not totally happy. We started this morning with what we thought would be good settings but the bike wasn't easy to turn and we lacked traction. This afternoon we made a lot of changes, especially during the last 20 minutes when it seems we found a good solution. After we made those adjustments I did one lap with a used tyre and then went out with a new race tyre and went very fast. I'm happy, because while I don't know what tyres the other guys used, I only used race tyres. We have a very competitive bike with great potential but it's not always easy to find a set-up that allows me to fully exploit its performance. Anyway, I'm doing my best and I know everyone at the factory is working really hard. Now we have a good set-up here we will spend tomorrow working to find the perfect race tyres." (Ducati Corse)

Kawasaki's Randy de Puniet illustrated best the benefits of rest and relaxation on performance, finishing this afternoon's free practice session in second place, and just one tenth of a second down on reigning world champion, Valentino Rossi. The 25-year-old Frenchman concentrated on the set-up of his Ninja ZX-RR during this morning's opening free practice session, switching between his two race machines frequently as he tested different combinations of suspension and engine settings, as well as a number of different tyres from Kawasaki's tyre partner, Bridgestone.

The Kawasaki rider continued this refinement process during the early part of the afternoon free practice session, before switching to the qualifying tyre on which he set his fastest time of the day to take second place on the timesheet.

De Puniet ended the day satisfied with both the race and qualifying set-up on his Ninja ZX-RR, but remains confident that more improvements can be made during free practice and qualifying tomorrow: "Today we've concentrated on testing as many different set-up and tyre options as possible on both bikes. For most of the time I was running pretty consistently at two minutes flat, but we didn't get a chance today to put the best tyres on the bike with the better set-up, so I'm confident that, when we do that tomorrow, we'll see a significant improvement in my lap time in race trim. Before the summer break I was struggling to get the best from the qualifying tyres, so we decided to run one this afternoon to see if I could regain the confidence I had earlier in the season. I'm happy to say that it worked, with the result that I finished today with the second fastest time. As I said, we still have some work to do on set-up during tomorrow's free practice session, and I hope I can repeat today's performance on a qualifier tomorrow afternoon." (Kawasaki Racing Team)

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