Rizla Suzuki competitor Loris Capirossi arrived on his Suzuki GSV-R in 11th position at the eni Motorrad Grand Prix Deutschland on Sunday, while colleague Álvaro Bautista was made to skip the second half of a race that was red flagged. Capirossi and Bautista were both challenging for top 10 places over the first part of the event, before Randy de Puniet smashed out on lap nine.

Capirossi was in close vicinity to the accident but missed the falling rider, however Bautista was not so fortunate and had to take evasive action to avoid De Puniet, but could not steer clear of the stricken Honda. The race was immediately red flagged due to De Puniet’s injuries and the three crashed motorcycles on the track – Aleix Espargaró was also involved in the incident. Sadly for Bautista and Espargaró they were unable to join the restart, due to the regulations, and had to sit out the second part of the race.

Capirossi started part two of the race from 11th on the grid, however was not able to find grip from the wheel he used for the restart.

Álvaro Bautista states, “It has been a bit of a disaster today. I didn’t start that well and I couldn’t get enough warmth in the right-side of the tyre early on. After the first few laps I managed to get a good rhythm and was able to stay with the group for top-10 positions. After nine laps Randy crashed and I had some riders in front of me and I couldn’t see where his bike was on the track, but when the other riders disappeared I saw the bike in front of me and I couldn’t do anything to avoid it, so I crashed. I then couldn’t get to the box with my bike, so I couldn’t start again. The regulation is the regulation, but in this case maybe there could’ve been an exception because I crashed because of Randy not for something I had done. We must continue learning, like we have done this weekend, because at the moment this is the most important thing.”

Loris Capirossi adds, “Overall we worked quite hard this weekend to find the best setting and we wanted to make a modification today for the race in warm-up, but unfortunately it was wet so we couldn’t try it. We decided to try a different setting in the race and some electronic modifications and in the first part of the race it worked really well. It was the best the bike had been all weekend and I had a good feeling and was sure I could get past some of the guys in front of me. After the red flag we decided to change to a used tyre from yesterday because there were no new ones left, and it just didn’t work and I had no feeling at all from the beginning until the end – zero grip! I ended up fighting with De Angelis to keep my place. This result is a bad position for us, but overall we have learned a lot of things today. I think without the stop in the race our result today would’ve been much better.”