Jerez, 28 March 2008: the LCR Honda MotoGP Team rider Randy De Puniet was back on track today for the first European round of the 2008 season at Jerez de la Frontera after the night race of Qatar three weeks ago. Randy circulated the Southern Spain circuit 49 times throughout the day clocking his fastest lap time on 1’41.268.

The Frenchman riding the Michelin-shod Honda RC212V worked hard with his crew to solve a lack of rear grip in the morning first free session improving his lap time of nearly one second in the afternoon session. Today’s tack temperature reached 27° and Randy worked mainly on tyres testing with Michelin staff to find the same feeling he had in the winter test.
Today’s frontrunner Lorenzo set a 1’40.321 fastest lap time.

De Puniet – 11th: “Honestly I am not very happy because my first day was not very easy. In this morning free session we suffered a rear traction problem which prevented me to go faster. I could not open the throttle and when I came in we decided to continue the whole session with the same tyres. The track grip was not sufficient and we wasted some tyres. Then we worked on engine mapping and chassis set-up to get a better feeling for the afternoon session: basically we made a step forward but it’s still not the same level we had here in the testing days. By the way we will make some specific adjustments for tomorrow to gain a couple of tenths”.