giovedì 22 ottobre 2009

DE PUNIET TAKES TOUGH 8th FINISH AT “THE ISLAND” GP


Phillip Island, 18 October: In hard fought race LCR Honda MotoGP racer Randy de Puniet finished 8th in today’s Australian Grand Prix at a sunny Phillip Island ahead 50.094 MotoGP fans. Today’s ambience temperature rose up to 16°C despite some cloudy skies in the morning and the 28-year-old was again a strong performer in this morning warm up session gaining the sixth quickest lap time (1’31.526).The Frenchman aboard the Honda RC212V was happy to be in the middle of the third row but lost some tenths after the start of the 27-lap race and he was still 8th at the end of the first lap. After that De Puniet was able to set impressive lap times beginning a tough battle for the 7th place with Dovizioso, Kallio and Melandri. With 8 laps to go the performance of the rear tyre dropped and De Puniet managed to finish 8th. The LCR team will be back on track next week end for the Malaysian GP. De Puniet – 8th: “We could finish in a better position but I took a bad start and got stuck behind Elias for 4 laps. After that I started to set my pace and was pretty fast. I had fun battling with Dovizioso, Kallio and Melandri but in the middle of the race the rear tyre dropped and had too much spinning. With 8 laps to go I was not comfortable on the front and decided to keep my position to score important points for the world classification. Honestly I aimed to finish sixth today but I still feel very confident for the next races”.
Race: 1 Stoner2 Rossi3 Pedrosa4 De Angelis 5 Edwards6 Dovizioso7 Melandri8 De Puniet9 Kallio10 Elias11 Vermeulen12 Capirossi13 Talmacsi14 Toseland15 HaydenLorenzo OUT