Zoom Loris Capirossi

Loris Capirossi secured his first front row start of the season as he powered his Rizla Suzuki GSV-R to third place on the grid for tomorrow's Italian GP.

Capirossi (1'48.313, 26 laps) showed his intentions from this morning's free practice session onwards. He was third quickest in the hour long session - even though a large amount of time was lost to bad weather. The experienced Italian used all his home-track knowledge today to record some very fast and consistent race simulation laps and will be looking to translate that form - and his best starting position since 2006 - into his best result of the season so far tomorrow.

Chris Vermeulen (P11, 1'49.220, 26 laps) was also very quick on his Bridgestone race tyres, with lap-times consistently in the top six during the first part of this afternoon's practice session. Suzuki's Australian star will start from the middle of the fourth row after his qualifying laps didn't go quite as planned, he was unable to get a clean lap of the 5.2km Mugello circuit and will need to get a good start tomorrow to make sure he is challenging at the front.

Today's qualifying was held in sunny conditions – the first session of the weekend that hasn't been disrupted by wet weather – with air temperatures reaching the mid-twenties and track surface temperature getting up to 39ºC. Pole position was taken by Capirossi's compatriot Valentino Rossi on his factory Yamaha.

Tomorrow's race is round six of the MotoGP World Championship and the lights change to signal the start of the 23-lap event at 14.00hrs local time (12. 00hrs GMT), when both Rizla Suzuki MotoGP racers will be pushing to the limits for the best results possible.

Loris Capirossi :
“It is a really good day for me! We have worked really hard right from first thing this morning and the team made a very clever and good job because they changed a lot of settings today - the bike was much better! Also we got a good rhythm with the race tyre and that was important for us as we didn't get a lot of time to get the set-up right – Stuart and the guys have done a great job today! I was a bit lucky on qualifying because I followed Valentino and he made an amazing time and I risked a lot on that lap to keep with him. I am happy to be on the front row and tomorrow is the first time this year we have had a good opportunity to fight for the podium, but I won't be going out for just that. I will be going for the win!”