CAMEL HONDA
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Turkish GP - Round 16 - MotoGP
Istanbul - Saturday 22nd October 2005 - Qualifying
Excellent progress from Chris and Alex in Turkey
The Camel Honda duo are two of the riders to have made most progress today, in
comparison to their results from the first day of practice, and tomorrow they
will start from the third and fourth rows of the grid. Alex Barros, who both in
the morning free session and afternoon qualifying showed he had similar pace to
the top five, set the eighth fastest time, whilst Chris Vermeulen, who is
quickly adapting to the RC211V and learning how to use the qualifying tyres,
took a promising overall eleventh quickest.
Sito Pons - Camel Honda
"This track gave no advantage to any rider in terms of experience, and it's a
great circuit, but it is also technical and challenging, yesterday the
differences in performance were much bigger than normal because everyone had
taken their own measures to combat the new track with different results. Our
riders were amongst those who made giant strides forward compared to yesterday,
and both have sealed decent position on tomorrow's grid. Alex has a good pace on
race tyres looking at the rest, not like the top two, but he's certainly in line
for a good race tomorrow. Chris has advanced a row on the grid compared to his
first race and in terms of lap-times has closed the gap to first place by half a
second on a much longer track: he's doing a magnificent job and if he can get
away well tomorrow, he will honestly get the chance to complete his objectives
and finish in the top ten.
Alex Barros - Camel Honda - 1'53.719 - 8th position
"The bike improved a lot today, I felt much more comfortable than yesterday. We
have changed everything a little bit, the gearing, the suspension, the
electronic power management system, a complete 360 of all the settings
basically, which is quite normal on a new track. We still have some small
problems but I'm quite satisfied with my race pace. With the qualifying tyres I
improved a little, but the third row is an average result."
Chris Vermeulen - Camel Honda - 1'54.217 - 11th position
"I'm still 1.8 seconds behind pole position but it's less than last time and it
feels great to be getting the bike more under my control and more familiar in my
hands. Of course, my objective today was to get into the top ten, and I missed
out by one spot because I made a slight error with the second qualifying tyre,
going wide in one corner, but in any case it's fantastic to manage to
out-qualify riders like Biaggi, Hopkins, Jacque. Tomorrow's race will
undoubtedly be difficult, this is a really tough track and there are some really
hard braking areas, but my aim is to be in the top ten as ever and if possible
ahead of another Honda. I want to thank the team because we are working great
together, it's a brilliant experience and it makes the job much easier than it
could otherwise have been."
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