[mickey]

Randy De Puniet

5th Position
"Even though now it is difficult for me to breath, I am really happy about what I did today. Not only because I got the best MotoGP result of my career so far, but because I did it regardless of my physical condition. I already knew it was going to be hard and the knee, the shoulder and the heat didn’t make it easy. I did a regular start and I lost a couple of positions and one more when Elias passed me after a fright in La Caixa turn. I was sixth after the first lap but I was certain my bike was much better than his. I don’t know what happened but a few laps later he touched my knee and my handlebar and, even though it didn’t take much to overtook him that made me lose contact with the front guys. I kept pushing and rode a good rhythm but they were definitely faster. We did a good job this weekend and my Ninja ZX-RR and my Bridgestone tyres worked so well today. I was completely focussed on my lap time, my braking points… At the end, Capirossi was coming closer but I managed to maintain a distance and got this fifth position that has a really good taste. I would like to thank everybody, the team, Kawasaki, Bridgestone, for helping me make this race a success. I hope that we can now build on this result."

MARCO MELANDRI (9th in the race, 4th in the championship on 75 points): "We're going through a rough patch. The team are giving their best, working hard, but the results just aren't coming. The bike doesn't give me any confidence and I can't ride it how I want. I'm really disappointed. We've struggled with the front end all weekend and after a few laps I lost confidence in it - it was skipping around and it was really hard to ride. We'll have to make some drastic changes."

TONI ELIAS (DNF , 9th in the championship on 45 points): "I'm really disappointed because I was having a good race. I got a good start and it looked like 5th place was a real possibility until the engine packed up on the 14th lap. These things happen in racing but I'm really disappointed because this was my home race in front of all my fans."

Alex Barros (43’41.769 – 8° classified): “I’m satisfied for my final result, I think I was good in this race. For us this week-end it hasn’t been very easy, we had some difficulties during the two days before the race, so this morning after the warm-up we decided to change setting but in the end we understood that it was better to come back and use the same set-up we had yesterday. Fortunately I made a good start, but at the first turn, I made a mistake and I lost some positions. Today, for me, the race was very hard, in the first part I had difficulties to recover position and in the second part I had some difficulties with the front. Unfortunately it didn’t feel as we expected and we maybe hoped for a bit more from this race; anyway, the thing that makes me satisfied is that I pushed strongly from the beginning to the end, fighting for the eighth position as if it were a podium. I have deep motivation and I hope to be faster in the next race.”


Alex Hofmann(43’57.841 – 13° classified): “I’m not satisfied, because this race wasn’t as I had hoped for. I don’t know the real reason because after the warm-up in the morning I was confident to do a good race. When I started, I knew immediately that I didn’t have the right feeling with the bike. I did not make a good start, furthermore I lost a lot in acceleration and I couldn’t be fast as I wanted. During the race I made some overtaking, but the moves weren’t enough to obtain a good end result. I’m very displeased with the race, especially because I wanted to be good for all the many fans who came here today. Tomorrow we will spend one day more in Spain to do some tests, I hope to be able to find the right solution for the next race.”