TT Assen: Pramac d'Antin Thursday notes

ASSEN: DEBUT OF IVAN SILVA IN THE MOTOGP CLASS

Good debut for IvaN sILVA in Assen. The substitute of Alex Hofmann (that substitutes the injured rider Gibernay on the official Ducati) made his first kilometres on a motorcycle of the MotoGP class, the Ducati Desmosedici GP06 "Sat." of the Team Pramac d'Antin MotoGP. The rider from Figueras (Girona - Spain) obtained the 18th time, right behind his Team mate Jose Luis Cardoso, that classified himself 17th. A cold day here in The Netherlands, with some intermittent rain that bothered the riders during the morning practice sessions.

Tomorrow morning at 10 a.m., there will be another session of free practice, before the single qualifying practice session reserved to the MotoGP class, at 2 p.m..

Jose Luis Cardoso #30 (17th - 1'42.814): "Today we worked a lot on the tyres and on the general setting of the motorcycle, for the race. We still haven't found an ideal solution and we will keep on working tomorrow, hoping that the meteorological conditions will remain dry during the whole day. About the new track, I have to admit I prefer it as it was before, this is a question of personal taste but the new sections are a bit inconvenient for our MotoGP bikes.".

Ivan Silva #22 (18th - 1'43.699): "This morning, as I never had raced on a motorcycle of the MotoGP class before, I tried to be more careful of the reactions of the bike, more than trying to be fast. I remained very calm, not to commit any error and to learn the maximum. Then, during the second practice session, I tried to put the motorcycle the way I like it, and my lap times got down regularly. I always rode cautiously, to avoid crashing, to exploit the bike at the maximum and to have fun as well. Tomorrow morning, we will go on working and improve ourselves, and I'm confident. Right now, I can say I'm very happy, before today I never had ridden on a MotoGP bike and I'm satisfied of this first approach".

Andre Laugier - Track Engineer of Ivan Silva: "We're happy. We thought IVAN would have needed more time to adapt himself on MotoGP but, in reality, everything is happening very quickly. He needs to make kilometres, we made him ride a lot today and we will go on in this direction tomorrow. In the afternoon, the weather conditions were stable and this allowed us to ride without too many stops. About the tyres, we actually were quite surprised, IVAN has got a good feeling with our tyres and already understood many things on them. To conclude, I could say he's a rider that tries to adapt himself to the bike the most as possible, instead of adapting the motorcycle to himself, and this is a very positive thing in our world".

-pda