Niccolo Canepa suffered from severe back pain during the opening practice session at Assen today – but does not think it will affect his performances this weekend.
The Italian rookie was 18th, beating only newcomer Gabor Talmacsi, and received treatment after the session.
"As soon as I concluded free practice I went to the mobile clinic because I had a lot of pain in my back," said Canepa. "It's been a couple of days that I have had backache, but I am sure that this will not compromise my performances on track."
He had also been hampered by some technical issues on his Pramac Ducati.
"Today we didn't start in the best way due to some technical problems that didn't allow us to do what we have planned in the first half of the session," Canepa said. "We have to understand what happened to be at our best for the next two days of work. We tried to solve the problems in the last minutes but at that time there wasn't so much time left."