Press release:The first free practice at Assen has been with perfect track and temperature condition. Mika Kallio has concluded in thirteenth position, the maximum from his point of view for a rookie, just over a second and half from the first while his team mate, Niccolò Canepa, is in eighteenth position. A lot of work has to be done by the Pramac Racing team to allow the two riders to sensibly improve tomorrow. Niccolò, after a few days of illness, isn't yet at the best physical conditions and suffer pain at his back that shouldn't anyway compromise his performances during the racing weekend.
Fabiano Sterlacchini - Pramac Racing Technical Director:
"We are reducing our first free practice session gap from the firsts and this is an important sign for us. We are following the solution found during Barcelona test and Mika is really trustful. As always in the second day of work of each Grand Prix, with more time at our disposal, we will find the right balance of the bike to allow Mika to result faster."
Mika Kallio - Pramac Racing rider - 13th in 1'39.464:
"It's not fair this way. In the first day of work in every race we start too behind compared to the riders that have already ridden in MotoGP on that track the year before. If we would have two hours at our disposal, like last season, things would be different, but we must take it the way it is. It seems simple but it's not easy to find the best lines to follow at each track. I don't want to be polemical but I wanted to make it clear: our potential, as we demonstrated in other occasions, is much better than the thirteenth place. Anyway compare to other first days of free practice things have gotten better and this gives us a lot of trust. In addition I missed the possibility of another lap for a couple of seconds otherwise I am convinced that we could have already improved our best lap time."
Niccolò Canepa - Pramac Racing rider - 18th in 1'41.020:
"As soon as I concluded free practice I went to the mobile clinic because I had a lot of pain at my back. It's been a couple of days that I have backache, but I am sure that this will not compromise my performances on track. Today we didn't start in the best way due to some technical problems that didn't allow us to do what we have planned in the first half of the session. We have to understand what happened to be at the best in the next two days of work. We have tried to solve the problems in the last minutes but at that time there weren't so much time left."
