Rizla Suzuki’s Loris Capirossi heads for his home Grand Prix at Misano this weekend along with team mate Ãlvaro Bautista, only a week after strong performances from both riders at the Indianapolis Grand Prix. Capirossi’s home town is only 100km away from the Misano circuit and it is a track where the experienced Italian has had great rides.In the past 3 years, Capirossi has scored 2 top 5 finishes, and he would love to claim that elusive 100th podium finish in front of his home crowd.
Speaking in a press release, Capirossi said, “It is always good to race at home and Misano is the closest track to where I am from. I am determined to put on a good performance there, because we have been working very hard all season and not getting the rewards that I think we deserve – so Misano will be the ideal place to start that happening and turn our season around. We still need to find the right solution to give us the best feeling from the GSV-R so will be trying to be as competitive as possible from the first day. We have to keep a strong mentality, we have seven more races to go this year and we have to keep fighting to get to the top.”
As for Bautista, this is his first visit to Misano on a MotoGP class machine, and arrives at the circuit on the back of an impressive 8th place finish at Indianapolis. And the Spaniard has a good history at the track. In 2008 he won whilst riding in the 250 class, and followed that up the following year with a 3rd in the 250’s also.
Speaking with Capirossi, Bautista is in a confident mood, “I have more confidence in myself and the bike after last weekend, so I will be trying as hard as I can right from the beginning at Misano to improve my performance on the bike.” said Bautista. “It was really important for me to finish the race at Indianapolis – as it seemed like a long time since that had happened. I still believe that we can fight with the top guys, so we need to make that the next target and keep improving for the rest of the season.”
