Friday Apr 28 2006
Free Practice - Istanbul

Ducati riders Loris Capirossi and Sete Gibernau got their Turkish GP weekend underway with promising first-day performances at Istanbul Park, placing seventh and ninth fastest, just a few tenths off provisional 'pole position'. In cool, overcast conditions the pair began laying the groundwork for Sunday's race, round three of the 17-event World Championship, by working on machine balance for this fast, undulating and challenging racetrack.

Capirossi, making his first appearance here after missing last year's inaugural Turkish GP through injury, ended the two sessions just 0.432 seconds down on fastest man Nicky Hayden, while Gibernau was only 0.656 seconds down, riding the Desmosedici GP6 for the first time at Istanbul.



LORIS CAPIROSSI, 7th fastest, 1m 54.055s
"I'm happy. This is my first time here but my team and my engineers gave me telemetry from last year which I studied at home, so I just had to learn where to put my wheels. It's a nice track, very up and down and with many changes of direction where the track suddenly drops away. It looked easy on paper but in reality it's more complicated! Anyway, I like it and quickly got into it. We already made some setting changes and tried some tyres. Tomorrow we'll keep on working and, of course, I can improve. It's impossible to learn the track well enough in two hours to be fastest.

"The tarmac is quite slippery, so we are working hard with Bridgestone and hoping it won't rain tomorrow because that will make things very hard for us if it's dry on Sunday. I'm very close to the front, one tenth faster and I'd be third, I lost some time going into the last turn a bit too fast. Anyway, I'm happy and I'm convinced we can be competitive on Sunday.

"Before coming here I thought the first and the third corners would be the most difficult, I was wrong about the first but the third, which comes after a fast right, where you need to change direction while going down a steep hill, really is hard. The most difficult point is the triple lefthander, it's bumpy and so fast that's easy to make a mistake and lose half a second."

SETE GIBERNAU, 9th fastest, 1m 54.279s
"That wasn't so bad, we're all very close, mostly within half a second. We're trying to find a good balance and I think everyone in the team, at Ducati and at Bridgestone has done a good job today. We're fast in some sections, we're just losing a bit in the areas where there's hard braking. We tried two different directions today and I think we've now found a good direction, so all we need to do is put everything together and get out there and do some laps. But it looks like there could be some rain tomorrow, so that could make it difficult for everyone because we definitely need more dry laps."

Temperatures: Ambient: 20 degrees. Track: 27 degrees