The Kawasaki Racing Team finished the first night of the 2008
MotoGP season in just 14th and 17th places after
John Hopkins and
Anthony West battled for rear grip in the chilly conditions.
New signing Hopkins worked his way through a number of rear
Bridgestone options in a bid to identify a tyre that could cope with the cold conditions should they remain for Sunday's 22-lap race, but found his track time limited by technical problems.
"Tonight we went out on track with the aim of finding the best tyre solution and unfortunately we ran into some minor technical issues in the later session," said the former Suzuki rider. "This meant we weren't able to put together a solid run to improve our lap time. I'm disappointed with tonight's overall result, as I know that we are capable of so much more. We have to find a tyre combination with good grip to suit these chilly conditions and although we've got our work cut out, I'm confident that we'll be much higher in the standings tomorrow."
West faired even worse, outpacing only
Sylvain Guintoli and suffering a late fall (pictured).
"The track is quite dusty tonight and we've found it quite difficult to make the tyres work in the cold conditions," confirmed the Australian. "Rear grip is the main issue, particularly on the left side of the tyre as the track is predominantly right-handed.
"I was trying to make one of the tyres work harder and although I had a few warnings about loss of traction, I still got caught out and managed to suffer my first high side aboard the Kawasaki," he continued.
"I was chasing a better lap time and crashed at turn two, which was really frustrating. I'm ok though and I am sure we can resolve some of the issues we've had during tomorrow's sessions."
