Qatar MotoGP: Suzuki eye return to 2007 form

Suzuki boss Paul Denning believes a successful season for the Japanese factory will be to emulate its success of the first year of the new 800cc era in 2007.

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Suzuki has been the major surprise package of winter testing with Italian veteran Loris Capirossi and Aussie Chris Vermeulen running close to the front on the new factory GSV-R.

Promising winter testing results on the new bike have raised confidence and optimism inside Suzuki that Capirossi and Vermeulen can be consistent challengers at the front of the field when the new season gets underway in Qatar this weekend.

And Denning has told MCN he’s like to see Suzuki return to the level of 2009, when American John Hopkins claimed fourth in the world championship and Vermeulen sixth.

Denning said: “In terms of results it would be nice to think that we could achieve what we did in 2007 and maybe more.

“In 2007 we were helped a little bit by some of our competitors problems as well as our own good level and it will be tough to achieve that again. We’d like to achieve that but certainly the riders and the team would like to do more.

“Loris has fought for a world championship at this level before and his target is to do that. Our target is to deliver him and Chris machinery that is capable of increasing our own confidence to run with the fastest guys.

“The difference we have seen in testing in Casey (Stoner) and Valentino (Rossi) and we have got to give our guys a bike that can help them get to that level of performance.

“We have never really performed well in Qatar and we had a really difficult race there last year. But we had a solid and positive test last month and we closed the gap, which was really big in lap time last year to the front guys.

“The important thing is to be a lot closer than last year.”