Capirossi rues missed opportunity after Vermeulen crash

Veteran Italian Loris Capirossi reckons he could have claimed a place on the front row of the grid for tomorrow’s Shanghai GP had he not crashed out with Aussie Chris Vermeulen at the end of qualifying.

Capirossi was only 0.4s adrift of Valentino Rossi’s stunning pole time through the first two splits when he tangled with Vermeulen’s factory Rizla Suzuki machine.

The factory Ducati rider suffered a nasty gash on his right arm in the incident though he is not an injury doubt for tomorrow’s 22-lap clash.

Both pointed the finger of blame at each other, but Capirossi was the more disappointed as he ended up way down in 14th place on the grid.

“This is shit, “he said.  “I have cut my arm and this is shit too, because at this track you have many strong braking points. Anyway we will see what happens. This is bad lack because in the first two sections I was just 0.4s slower than Valentino.  I don’t know what happened. Normally I make that corner wide to go a little bit quicker on the exit and Chris came under me and hit my bike. This happens, its racing and I don’t want to say nothing bad about him. I hope to have a little bit more luck tomorrow. He broke all my leathers on my right arm and he hit my handlebar and that’s what took me down.”

Vermeulen needed treatment for a severe cut on a toe on his right foot, but team boss Paul Denning denied rumours that Vermeulen had lost part of the toe after his foot got trapped under his GSV-R V4 machine.

Vermeulen clearly blamed Capirossi and he said: “Loris made a mistake and I went up the inside of him and he then hit my back wheel and we both went down. I am not happy because I think I could have been on the two front rows. But that’s racing.”