Some significant close season improvements on the GSV-R and some decentpreseason test results saw Rizla Suzuki head to the championship-openingCommercialbank Grand Prix of Qatar in good spirits, but things did not goaccording to plan.

A DNF following a high speed crash for Loris Capirossi and seventh place forChris Vermeulen meant the race itself was something of an anti-climax for theteam and they will be hoping for a much better showing next time out inJapan.

Although the result equaled Vermeulen’s best ever finish at Qatar from threeprevious visits (and was a vast improvement on his nightmare 17th place start tolast season), a lack of rear grip late in the race was a major concernafterwards, given that it is a problem the Suzuki riders were also hampered byat several races in 2008.

The Australian rider made a decent start from eighth on the grid (his bestever qualifying result at the Losail International Circuit) and stayed with thepace early on. He held his ground in battles with various opponents in themiddle of the race but late on was in danger of being caught by Ducati satelliterider Mika Kallio on his MotoGP debut, as the tyre problem took its toll.

Nonetheless Vermeulen managed to avoid any late mistakes and was happy tohave scored some decent points for the team.

Assessing the first GP of the year the 26 year-old from Brisbane noted, “Thetrack conditions on Monday night were a bit different to what it had been allweekend and it was very different to the test which was how I had the bikeset-up, and to be honest I really struggled for front-end feeling.”

“Towards the end of the race the rear tyre performance dropped off as well sothat’s something we’ve really got to work on. It’s hard though with the lack oftesting in race conditions and also on race weekends with the sessions beingshorter and there being less of them, it makes it very difficult to put racedistance on the tyres and to iron out any other problems.”

Vermeulen is already in much better shape than this time last year having hada poor start to the 2008 season, with eighth place in Portugal being his bestresult in the first four races.

He now hopes to pick up the pace at round two in Japan on the 24th-26th Aprilweekend, stating, “Qatar was not the result we wanted because we were hoping tobe in the top-five. We have got quite a bit of work to do to catch up to thepodium so we need to put our thinking caps on and go to Motegi and have a betterperformance!”