French GP: Pramac d'Antin Friday notes

PRAMAC D'ANTIN MOTOGP : CONTINUITY IN THE WORK AT LE MANS

A day characterized by the instability of the weather and the coldness, on the track of Le Mans in France ; Happily, the MotoGP class was saved and the Pramac d'Antin MotoGP Team had the possibility to work on the setting of the Ducati Desmosedici GP06 "Sat." on a dry track during both sessions of free practice. Alex Hofmann obtained the 17th general time, while Jose Luis Cardoso classified himself 19th.

For tomorrow, the whole Team hopes to be able to go on practising on a dry track to give continuity to the work that was done today. There will be another session of free practice in the morning, before the single session of qualifying practice reserved to the MotoGP class riders at 2p.m..

Alex Hofmann #66 (17th - 1'37.173): "Today we had the opportunity to work a lot, the rain didn't ruin our plans as it did for the other categories. That allowed us to test a new tyre, which had positive and negative outcomes. Tomorrow we will go on testing it, to have a more concrete judgement. About the track, I can say that the modifications they did to it are nice, the chicane configured in this manner is not bad. Tomorrow we will go on working hard, to define the optimal set-up for the race on Sunday ; we have got a good direction in which we need to concentrate ourselves and we are optimistic".

Jose Luis Cardoso #30 (19th - 1'38.509): "Today we worked on the tyres. Our official tyre supplier, DUNLOP, brought us a new tyre here, slightly better, and that allowed us to concentrate our work on the definition of the best set-up for our DUCATI. From the first practice session of this morning, my feeling with the bike, on this track, improved during the second session. We worked in a constant way and tomorrow we will go on like this, I consider the set-up of the motorcycle more important than the single lap time. Anyway, we tested a qualifying tyre at the end of the session, but it didn't make us gain a lot ; we will test another one tomorrow, and from what says my team mate it should be a little bit better".

Andre Laugier - Track Engineer of Jose Luis Cardoso: "Without the rain, we were able to take advantage of both sessions of free practice on the dry track. This allowed us to work a lot, even if the coldness didn't help us at all, as, actually, many of the tyres we have are more adapted to temperatures a bit higher. Anyway, both our riders have been constant during the whole day, and so we could work concentrating ourselves especially on one tyre, testing different solutions for the setting for our motorcycle. Tomorrow we will go on with this work, hoping that the conditions will remain dry. It's quite positive for us to know in which direction we have to work and the whole Team would like to get the chance to demonstrate their valour".

-pda