Estoril, 12 April 2008: after yesterday’s unpredictable weather conditions, the sun shined on windswept Estoril track today for the 800cc qualifying session which saw Yamaha rider Lorenzo on the top of the timesheets with a 1’35.715 lap time. The LCR Honda MotoGP rider Randy De Puniet rode his Michelin-shod Honda RC212V to the 8th fastest time despite a crash in the morning session.

The Frenchman escaped unhurt from the incident and continued to search for the optimum setting from his machine in the afternoon session recording a quickest lap time of 1’37.223. De Puniet will start from the third row for tomorrows 28-lap race hoping to get a top-six finish at the track where he already got several successes in the past.


De Puniet – 8th: “It’s been pretty hard today because this morning I crashed and the guys had to work strongly to prepare the bike for this afternoon session. I want to thank them for their great job. By the way my feeling on race tyres in the morning free session was ok both on the front and the rear and I was confident to improve my pace in the qualifying session. We had a minor technical issue and I was not able to get the same rhythm because the bike was spinning to much. I spent more track time to fix the problem but the I am not very satisfied. Anyway we will make some adjustments in tomorrow’s warm up session and we will see how the bike will react”.


Qualifying Practice:

1 Lorenzo (1’35.715)
2 Pedorsa (1’35.948)
3 Rossi (1'356.199)
4 Hayden (1’36.266)
5 Edwards (1’36.289)
6 Toseland (1’36.790)
7 Dovizioso (1’36.998)
8 De Puniet (1’37.223)
9 Stoner (1’37.253)
10 Hopkins (1’37.346)
11 Nakano (1’37.664)
12 Capirossi (1’37.786)
13 Vermeulen (1’37.843)
14 Elias (1’38.561)
15 West (1’38.775)
16 De Angelis (1’38.823)
17 Melandri (1’39.115)
18 Guintoli (1’39.355)