DUCATI MARLBORO:

The MotoGP World Championship arrived at Donington Park for the final time today as the first practice session for the British Grand Prix took place in conditions that have been synonymous with the Leicestershire circuit since it first hosted the event back in 1987. A mixture of sunshine and rain made it difficult for the riders on track and whilst the lap times were a long way off record pace in a session that started wet and ended virtually dry, the Ducati Marlboro Team riders were both competitive and satisfied with their performance.

CASEY STONER (Ducati Marlboro Team) (2nd; 1’38.872)
“It was good to be able to test the wet setting today because we’ve struggled with it a little this year and we need time to work out the best solution. We’re still far from it at the moment but it felt quite good and we have a good base to work from now. Once we got some laps under our belt in the wet I decided to sit the rest of the session out because even though the track was drying it was very slippery and it would be foolish for us to risk an unnecessary crash on the first day of an important weekend. Hopefully we’ll get a couple of sessions in the dry tomorrow and ideally, from our point of view, we’d like it to be cool.”

NICKY HAYDEN – (Ducati Marlboro Team) (10th; 1’40.116)
“Typical British weather! It’s been like this since I got here at the start of the week. We started out in the wet and I didn’t have much feel to begin with but we made a couple of changes and got better and better as the session went on. On the last lap I went straight in the last corner and ran wide so I made a little error there. Basically the bike didn’t feel too good in the heavy rain but much better in the damp. The weather looks better for tomorrow so we hope that’s the case because it was difficult to draw any conclusions today.”