French GP. 1st qualifying practice. Driver´s comments

Nieto: ‘I only hope that tomorrow it will be dry, so I can improve my lap times’
Repsol driver´s comments about French 1st qualifying practiceValentino Rossi 2nd MotoGP: ‘This is again a new bike with a new track. We will find ourselves in this position many times this year. We start from zero and have to work fast. We need to make the traction of the bike better. It is a little hard to turn and I am running too wide in many of the corners. It started working better towards the end of the session but then the rain comes.’Tohru Ukawa 6th GP: ‘I am much happier with the afternoons session than I was this morning. We have made improvements in the right direction and we are around one second faster. We need to do much more work on the set-up. I don’t have enough contact feeling with the track. We will work hard on the suspension and tyre relationship tomorrow and I am confident we will go better. I qualified here in 12th position last year so where we are now is better!’Fonsi Nieto, 9th 250: ‘This morning we did a lot of work on setting the bike – mainly the suspension, to keep looking for small improvements. It was a pity that it started to rain in the afternoon, because it is a little bit risky in these conditions. I only hope that tomorrow it will be dry, so I can improve my lap times and my grid position. The positive part of the day is that we were able to work on setting up my spare bike for the rain, just in case we have a wet race on Sunday. We have to be prepared for whatever may come.’Toni Elías 14th 250 : ‘This morning I felt really comfortable at the circuit where last year I got my first podium. During the free practice, we made some changes to the front suspension, which worked well, and I was able to set fastest time. This gave me a lot of confidence, and I was completely comfortable. My pace was good throughout the whole free session, but I lost a lot of time because of the rain in the afternoon. The track conditions were very bad, and the rain kept getting worse. I decided to take it all calmly, to avoid risking a crash, so I ended up 14th. Tomorrow I have to work hard to improve my times and make sure that I qualify for the race.’Daniel Pedrosa 16th 125: We had many problems with the front end every time I tried to open the gas the wheel would try to tuck under, with a big risk of crashing. Today I could do nothing more, but tomorrow is another day. Maybe it will rain & I don’t know. But I am confident we can solve all our problems, so that the bike has a good set up for Sunday’s race.’Joan Olivé 18th 125: ‘At first I was going well, but I think we stopped to change the tyres too early in the session, because towards the end – when you need to be at your very best – I felt my tyres were already too worn, and the bike was sliding too much. I hope to improve my time and my grid position tomorrow.’