Kawasaki's John Hopkins has got a lot of work to do tonight and tomorrow morning because a rib injury that forced him to sit out yesterday's free practice session had a major impact on today's qualifying session.
Hopkins, who aggravated the mysterious injury on thursday night was advised by medics not to ride yesetday because he was in so much pain, only managed to out-pace his team-mate Anthony West and could only manage 17th on the grid. There was some rumour in the paddock that Hopkins had some personal issues yesterday, but they have proven to be unfounded.
"It's been a real task today as we've been on the back foot because I had to sit out practice yesterday," said Hopper. "My rib injury is definitely improving and I feel much more comfortable on the bike, but a lack of time on track has caused us quite a headache.

"We've struggled mainly with the front-end of the machine and this track is completely different from Brno, so we had a lot of setting changes to make. I had to squeeze a lot into the two hours on track and we had to wait until the afternoon heat, which will be similar to that of the race, before we could try to find a useable race tyre.

"Then we had to fit in qualifying too, and our final position today reflects this. My crew chief has a lot of ideas about the areas we need to change and we will review the data overnight to see where we can make significant improvements during tomorrow's warm-up."