Disappointed Suzuki duo expect good race

Despite qualifying only eighth, Vermeulen was the second best Bridgestone runner of the day behind poleman Casey Stoner on Ducati. The former Superbike rider, however, reckons that the work done for the race will allow him to run strongly, provided he can have a good start.

"Apart from the qualifying position, it's been another good day at the circuit for us today," said the Australian.

"We learned a lot about the bike and the tyres and I feel like I've got a great package underneath me for the race - the team and Bridgestone have all done a good job to give me that.

"When it came to qualifiers it was quite a different story to the race tyres, but a similar story to recent weeks. I felt like I got the best out of the qualifying tyres that I could but it still left me back on the third row, which is especially frustrating with the speed we had shown on race tyres.

"Like always we will need to get a good start, but I believe we've got the pace to run with the front guys, so hopefully I can get up to them early enough and race with them."

Capirossi, who could qualify no better than twelfth, also believes that his bike can run strongly in the race with a hard tyre. The Italian suspects, however, that the rubber used in today's grid-deciding session might have been a too-hard compound.

"I think we have made big step with the race tyres this afternoon," said Capirossi, "because we are much quicker than we have been at any other time this weekend, and we are sure that we can keep up a good rhythm in the race. We still need to improve a little bit more and we will be trying another few things in warm-up tomorrow.

"On the qualifiers we had quite a few problems with grip. The front tyre was a bit too hard and the rear qualifiers made it push a lot and we lost a lot of time because of that. We will need to use the hard tyre for the race so maybe today for qualifying it was too hard.

"All the team has done a great job to improve the bike and we will have to be on the attack from the start tomorrow - but we are ready to do that."