Donington, 21 June 2008: LCR Honda MotoGP Team rider Randy De Puniet will start the British Grand Prix from the 5th row after a difficult qualifying session at Donington Park today. De Puniet posted the 14th fastest time (1’41.110), on the rain-lashed and slippery 4.024 km track.

After yesterday’s sunny opening day of the British GP when De Puniet managed tenth in the dry, this morning free session was hit by persistent rain as predicted by the weather forecast with track temperature of only 16°C. The 27-year-old suffered from a lack of grip due to the slippery track conditions and crashed a couple of times in the morning free session.
The hour long qualifying session was ridden on a similarly damp surface, but with grip at a premium, the Frenchman was unable to feel comfortable on the bike and came home fourteenth. Today’s poleman is Stoner followed by Rossi and Vermeulen.

De Puniet -14th: “This morning I crashed twice and we could not improve our machine in the wet because we spent a lot of time to adjust both bikes. Then in the afternoon session we fixed some points in the chassis set-up and suspension regulations making an improvement in full wet condition but it’s still not perfect. At the end of the session the track surface was still wet but getting better and probably we did not chose the right tyre in those conditions. Basically we are paying a little bit the track time we lost this morning and maybe it cost us some positions in the grid but we must deal with it”.

Qualifying Practice:

1 Stoner (1’38.232)
2 Rossi (1’38.881)
3 Vermeulen (1’39.018)
4 Hayden (1’39.270)
5 Edwards (1’39.601)
6 Dovizioso (1’39.783)
7 West (1’39.995)
8 Spies (1’40.244)
9 Pedrosa (1’40.350)
10 Nakano (1’40.417)
11 Hopkins (1’40.539)
12 Guintoli (1’40.595)
13 De Angelis (1’40.667)
14 De Puniet (1’41.110)
15 Melandri (1’41.379)
16 Toselad (1’.41.751)
17 Lorenzo (1’41.873)
18 Elias (1’42.933)