Two hours of practice and qualifying for tomorrow's final MotoGP of the year at the Grand Prix of Valencia have placed the Tech 3 Yamaha Team in an encouraging frame of mind for a good performance in what is the final race with the team for both Carlos Checa and James Ellison.
Carlos and James finished the critical one hour qualifying session in 16th and 19th positions respectively but these places are deceptive as on race tyres the Tech 3 Yamaha Team is right in the hunt. Carlos's lap times especially are similar to those of pole sitter and fellow Yamaha rider Valentino Rossi and, encouragingly, just over a second off the fastest pole time of the defending world champion.
Also during qualifying, Carlos did almost an entire Grand Prix distance on race tyres to boost his confidence for his final race with the Tech 3 Yamaha Team while teammate James had his session interrupted with a crash as he was pushing hard following Carlos in an effort to move up the grid. Although he had a small hiccup with the low-side crash, the Englishman still lowered his lap times from yesterday to set him in the mood for a good performance.
Carlos Checa (16th, 1'32.747, 31 laps):"I am not too disappointed with the session, although of course we would like to be closer to the front, but I did a race pace on a new tyre selection so we hope we can do the same times and be able to do the entire distance. We are quite satisfied with the job we did as on the last lap we did a flat 34. Our main problem is the consistency and to be able to race all laps in the 33s will be quite difficult. Unfortunately, with qualifying tyres we had a lot of chattering and couldn't improve too much. I thought I may be able to do one more lap but this was not possible. We are not in the best place on the grid as we are a bit further back than we would've liked but I am confident after doing the lap times today on race tyres that if we can get a good start we may be able to push our way through a few positions to get closer to the front but we have to remember that this is a very hard place to pass so we must aim for the best of starts. Also, as it is my last race with the team I want to have a good result to say thanks for all the hard work they have put in this year. At the beginning of the year we knew this would be a very difficult season but for everything that has happened I must say that it is one of the most personally satisfying years I have had in my career."
James Ellison (19th, 1'33.953, 25 laps):"The session was ok at first and I really thought we may pull out a half decent qualifying position but we are still hitting a barrier that we can't push through, as once we start pushing through it we are having heaps of chattering problems on the right side. It starts to chatter then you try and ride through it and sometimes you get away with it and it stops chattering and sometimes it doesn't and that's what happened when I lost the front through the second right-hander. I can follow Carlos on exactly the same line and speed but when we look at the telemetry we see how different each bike is performing but it seems to have been the case all year. We have a pretty good idea for a race setup as I can run around in the 34 second bracket quite comfortably so I am fairly confident that we can run a good pace tomorrow and finish off a difficult year in the points.
Herve Poncharal - Tech 3 Yamaha Team Director:"First up congratulations to Valentino as this could be the most important pole position of his career. Saying that, it was a not so bad day for us today although the time sheets may show different. We look quite good on race tyres as we did 20 laps with Carlos earlier in the session and the lap times was very consistent with the entire block in the 1 minute 33 second bracket which after two days appears to be what the race pace will be and this is quite promising. Unfortunately we didn't qualify as well as we could've done and the starting position is not what we would've have liked but we saw Carlos at Estoril start from quite far behind after an incident at the first corner and he came back to a very decent position after the first few laps. We hope tomorrow that he will be able to make his way through the field for a similar result. As it is Carlos' last race for the team in Spain front of his home crowd we would like him to do well so we will all be trying our best. James was riding quite well also until he fell when pushing. We are happy to see him pushing hard and although he didn't improve after he crashed, he was very aggressive and this is what we like him to do and tomorrow we hope that he can do the same thing and finish his time with the team with a satisfactory result."
Circuit Length: 4005
Temp: 31
Weather: Dry
Qualifying 1 MotoGP Valencia 28/10/2006: 1 Valentino Rossi Yamaha ITA 1'31.002
2 Troy Bayliss Ducati AUS 1'31.210
3 Loris Capirossi Ducati ITA 1'31.307
4 Shinya Nakano Kawasaki JPN 1'31.341
5 Nicky Hayden Honda USA 1'31.378
6 Daniel Pedrosa Honda ESP 1'31.385
7 Casey Stoner Honda AUS 1'31.470
8 Chris Vermeulen Suzuki AUS 1'31.606
9 John Hopkins Suzuki USA 1'31.663
10 Colin Edwards Yamaha USA 1'31.711
11 Randy De Puniet Kawasaki FRA 1'31.892
12 Marco Melandri Honda ITA 1'32.062
13 Toni Elias Honda ESP 1'32.144
14 Kenny Roberts Team Robert KR USA 1'32.358
15 Makato Tamada Honda JPN 1'32.467
16 Carlos Checa Yamaha ESP 1'32.747
19 James Ellison Yamaha GBR 1'33.953
Related Linkswww.yamaha-racing.com
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