After the frustrations of the French Grand Prix at Le Mans just over a week ago, Kawasaki's John Hopkins and Anthony West head this week for the Tuscan hills of Italy, and the picturesque circuit of Mugello, for the sixth round of the MotoGP world championship in optimistic mood.
"I was happy to leave Le Mans after a difficult weekend, and it's been good to spend some time at home, especially on my birthday," said Hopkins. "A lot of my friends flew out to see me and we had a good time relaxing, having fun on the beach, so I feel really good. I've been training hard and I'm looking forward to Mugello. We made some improvements at the test following the race in France, and now we have four races close together, so we need to make a good start to these. The next round is going to be a difficult task for us, but I'm confident we can bounce back from our disappointing results. We're one-hundred-percent fit, focussed and ready to take on the challenge in Italy."
Anthony West commented, "'Le Mans was tough, but I got back to my new home in Belgium and tried to put it behind me by training even harder for Mugello. One of the good things about living so close to our team boss is that there is always one of his friends around to go training with, whether it be running, cycling or mountain biking. Ahead of the Italian Grand Prix I'm also going to head down to Austria to do some downhill mountain biking, so I'll be raring to go by the time I get to the track. The Mugello circuit is not one of my favourites, and I've never ridden a MotoGP bike there before, but with the information we gleaned from the post race test in France, I'm hopeful that we'll be able to make another big step forward this coming weekend."
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