RIZLA SUZUKI:

Loris Capirossi and Álvaro Bautista continued in a positive direction during the penultimate day of testing at Valencia, as the pair made use of the improved conditions in Spain today.

Capirossi (1’33.211, 58 laps) produced his quickest ever lap on a Suzuki GSV-R around the 4,005m Ricardo Tormo circuit on race tyres, as he resumed from where he left off yesterday by trying the new parts that Suzuki has supplied for this test. Capirossi tested new-spec engine parts as well as continuing the evaluation of the Akrapovic exhaust systems and some new electronic strategies.

Bautista continued with his acclimatisation of the Suzuki GSV-R following his step-up in class to MotoGP. Using the same specification bike as was raced the previous weekend – without any on the new parts – he circulated the Spanish circuit a further 73 times today, eventually fishing with a best time of 1’34.540, over a second quicker than his fastest lap from Monday.

The Rizla Suzuki pair has a further half-of-a-day of testing tomorrow morning at Valencia, which will signal Capirossi’s final outing on the GSV-R for 2009, with only Bautista travelling to Estoril next week to join Nobuatsu Aoki for a further three-day test.

Loris Capirossi:
“It has been a positive day because we have continued to develop the bike and we tested many different things. We tested a new engine specification and a couple of sets of pipes, as well as a different electronics system on the bike. We have improved today and the whole team is quite happy and for sure the way to go quicker is now not so far away. We have a couple more important things to try tomorrow, especially on the electronics side. I think that the condition we had in the bike today was easily the best for the whole weekend and this is why we went much better. We still need to concentrate really hard and tomorrow will be an important day as will the test next week in Portugal for Álvaro and Nobu, because we need to understand as much about the bike in these tests as possible.”

Paul Denning – Team Manager:
“We’ve got through a lot of work today and the conditions have been quite kind so that has helped us as well. The time difference from Loris to the front guys has reduced massively compared to race-day and this has been due to a number of modifications to the bike that the factory has introduced here. The most important one of those has without doubt been the change to the engine spec, which has helped a lot with the smoothness of power delivery and the way the bike exits the corners.

“Alvaro has been quietly impressive today. On every pit exit he has made 10 or 12 lap runs which have been ultra consistent and he has lifted his pace steadily all day. His bike is completely the same specification as was used in Sunday’s Grand Prix – without any of the test parts Loris has been running – so bearing that in mind his pace looks encouraging for the future. So far – in summary – it’s been a better test already than we expected and a little bit of light is on the horizon.”