Australian GP: Pramac d'Antin Saturday notes

DIFFICULT QUALIFYING SESSION FOR PRAMAC D'ANTIN MOTOGP Alex Hofmann finished with the 17th fastest laptime at the end of a difficult qualifying session at the Australian Gran Prix. The German rider, who had problems with all of his qualifying ...

DIFFICULT QUALIFYING SESSION FOR PRAMAC D'ANTIN MOTOGP

Alex Hofmann finished with the 17th fastest laptime at the end of a difficult qualifying session at the Australian Gran Prix. The German rider, who had problems with all of his qualifying tires, wasn't able to complete a full, fast lap, but is confident in his consistent race pace to score points once again.

His team mate, Jose Luis Cardoso, ended the day in 19th, and suffered from the same problems as Hofmann. Nevertheless, he is looking forward to getting a decent result tomorrow.

The start of the race is scheduled tomorrow at 15:00 local time, one hour later than normal. (GMT+10, CET+8).

ALEX HOFMANN #66 (17th - 1'31.676): "I am not satisfied. The Dunlop Qualifying tires I had were finished before I could complete a fast lap. I couldn't push to improve my times because the tires didn't last. My best laptime this afternoon is roughly the same as I obtained this morning with the race tires and this validates my position on the starting grid. Anyway, once again I have a consistent race pace and for the race I will be ready to fight and finish in the points. We did a good job today in spite of some problems we had, and tomorrow we need to concentrate on getting a good start."

JOSED LUIS CARDOSO #30 (19th - 1'32.870): "I wasn't able to stop the clock again, unlike this morning's laptimes, and I don't know why. I am not happy because we had problems with all of our tires, both the race tire and the qualifying one. We are too far from the other riders, and I just couldn't accelerate like I wanted to because the bike was sliding everywhere. I'm hoping for a lot of luck tomorrow."

EMANUELE MARTINELLI - Track Engineer for Alex Hofmann: "We worked very well with the race tires in the earlier free practice sessions, but not with the qualifying tires, and that didn't allow us to finish the laps that counted. The aim for these two days was to control the high temperatures of our tires because of the amount spin we are experiencing here. We are doing alright with race tires, and the adjustments we made to the suspension and chassis were useful for us in order to have a good pace race."