Capirossi signals Ducati revival at Assen

Two years after setting pole position for the Dutch TT in his first season with
Ducati at Assen, Loris Capirossi today sparked hopes of a revival for the
Italian factory with the fastest lap on the opening day of action at the 75th
anniversary of the famous event. The Italian struggled to eleventh place in the
last round at Catalunya, just seven days after his first podium of the season at
Mugello, but his early pace in Holland suggests he can be back to challenge for
the Italian factory's second MotoGP victory in Saturday's historic race.

"We are in a much better situation than we were at Barcelona two weeks ago but
we need to work on bike set-up to get more out of the tyres," said Capirossi.
"The front is fine but we're still trying to find a good rear for the race. I
did my fastest lap at the end of the session on my number two bike with a race
rear I hadn't used before so we'll test that tyre for more laps tomorrow. At the
moment we're not super-competitive in race trim but Bridgestone are working so
hard that we have got a lot of new tyres to try here."

Despite Capirossi's late charge there is little doubt that the dominant force
throughout the day was current series leader Valentino Rossi, who set the pace
for the morning practice and most of the afternoon on the Yamaha before
ultimately being bettered by his compatriot. Honda's Sete Gibernau trailed Rossi
for most of the day and ended up third fastest on the combined time sheets,
0.197 seconds adrift of the World Champion.

Alex Barros began his quest to repeat his 500cc victory here from 2000 with the
fourth fastest time on ahead of Honda colleagues Marco Melandri and Nicky
Hayden. Capirossi's Ducati team-mate Carlos Checa, who finished second to Mick
Doohan here in 1997, was seventh quickest, with Colin Edwards, Max Biaggi and
Shinya Nakano completing the top ten. The only crash today in the MotoGP class
came from Ruben Xaus, who escaped uninjured from a high-speed tumble that
wrecked his Yamaha.

Sebastian Porto scored only his second ever dry weather victory at this circuit
last season and showed signs of a repeat in the first qualifying practice for
the 250cc class. Porto bounced back from a difficult start to the season to hold
off the challenge of Jorge Lorenzo and Casey Stoner this afternoon, taking
provisional pole position in a time of 2'05.530. Hiroshi Aoyama qualified fourth
fastest to complete the provisional front row whilst his team-mate Dani Pedrosa,
who leads the current standings by 27 points from Stoner, was sixth. Alex de
Angelis, Hector Barbera and Andrea Dovizioso complete the second row.

In the 125cc class current series leader Mattia Pasini continued his recent form
by taking provisional pole position by just 0.003 seconds ahead of Mika Kallio.
Pasini's lap time of 2'12.742 was almost half a second quicker than the third
fastest rider, Spanish youngster Sergio Gadea, whilst Marco Simoncelli completes
the provisional front row. Thomas Luthi, who is second in the championship by a
single point, was tenth fastest.

INFO 2005/84. 23-06-2005
DORNA COMMUNICATIONS
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