Zoom Chris Vermeulen

Chris Vermeulen will start from the third row for tomorrow's Dutch TT at Assen, after qualifying his Rizla Suzuki GSV-R in eighth place during this afternoon's session.

Vermeulen (1'36.768, 25 laps) lost a lot of valuable set-up time during this morning's final free practice session due to a wet but drying track, following heavy overnight rain. He worked very hard during the qualifying to make up for the lost time and was pleased with the steps taken when it came to using his Bridgestone qualifying tyres to decide his starting position for tomorrow's 26-lap race.

Vermeulen will be Rizla Suzuki MotoGP's sole representative on the grid for the Dutch Grand Prix following Loris Capirossi's crash yesterday that has sidelined the experienced Italian with a puncture wound to his right inner forearm. Capirossi was present at the circuit today to support the team and will remain at Assen until tomorrow's race. Suzuki's Italian star is already making a good recovery from the operation he had yesterday to repair the injury and is planning to make a comeback at Sachsenring in Germany next month.

Today's qualifying was held in dry, but overcast conditions, reigning World Champion Casey Stoner will start from pole position with Dani Pedrosa second and championship leader Valentino Rossi in third.

Tomorrow's race is the only Grand Prix on the calendar held on a Saturday and the lights will go out to signal the start at 14.00hrs local time (12.00hrs GMT).

Chris Vermeulen:
“It was a difficult qualifying session because we had so much work to get through after losing so much time this morning. We had a lot of set-up changes that we wanted to try but it was too wet earlier and we lost a lot of time sitting in the garage just waiting to see what the weather was going to do - so really from the morning session we didn't learn anything at all! In the qualifying session we got a little bit lost with set-up because we tried so many things, and in the end we went back to what we ran yesterday and that seemed to work well. My last couple of qualifying laps were pretty good and I managed to get on to the third row and scrape something out of the session. At least we are up there and if we get a good start and a strong first few laps, I think we can be competitive and fight for at least a top five finish.”