Today the mythical circuit of Assen was witness to the first day of practice in preparation for the Dutch GP, fortunately the typical wet weather seen at this date in the World Championship calendar did not appear, and the good weather allowed the first day to be completed in perfect conditions.
For the two Repsol Honda Team riders their first contact was positive, although at the end of the day it was clear that both Nicky Hayden as well as Dani Pedrosa and their respective teams have a lot of work to do this weekend if they want to catch Casey Stoner, the Australian rider, who was especially fast around the Dutch track today.
Stoner lowered the Assen track record by more than one second, and what is more was the fastest in the two free practice sessions. In the morning, Hayden was second fastest, just 0.6 seconds behind Stoner, and Pedrosa third at 0.8 seconds.
In the afternoon Pedrosa and Hayden went out onto the track with the firm intention of lowering their times and to get closer to the pace that the Australian was setting, but in spite of setting better times, both of them stayed a little behind Stoner in the second free session. Nicky Hayden was fourh at 0.9 secs and Dani Pedrosa, with a set up he did not feel comfortable with, ninth at 1.193 secs. Tomorrow, the weather forecast is different – some predict rain, others settled weather, and so the team will have wait and see what the exact conditions are like for the timed practice session.
Julian Simón finished the day encouraged by the progress he made throughout the first day. Although in the morning and in a large part of the timed practice his times did not turn out to be so good, in the end though he was able to change the set up on his motorbike and set the sixth best time, 1.176 secs off the provisional pole set by Alvaro Bautista. The Repsol rider was especially slow on the third section, but after changing the tyres, along with the chassis and the suspension set ups, he got onto the second row of the provisional grid on the last two laps.
In 125cc, Marc Márquez had a little fright, falling at the end of the timed session, although luckily without any consequences. The Repsol rider finished the session improving his time, he had been 14th, and he was setting faster laps so as to continue climbing on the leaderboard, well aware of the fact that if it rains tomorrow it will be today`s classification that decides Saturday`s grid. Nevertheless, two minutes from the end of the session when he was braking to take the third corner his front wheel lost its grip and Márquez ended up on the ground. Without any chance of getting back on the track with the team`s second motorbike, the young Repsol rider saw another three riders improve their times, so he is now temporarily placed in 17th position.
His teammate Esteve Rabat finished 15th, setting a time of 1′ 46.7 seconds, 1.167 seconds off the best time set by Sergio Gadea. Rabat was soon into his stride, feeling comfortable on the Dutch track, setting the eighth best time of the free session. On the timed lap he was able to gradually lower his times, but his KTM 125 FRR by this time was suffering from stability problems on the rear wheel. Tomorrow, weather permitting, he will try to improve the set up in search of a one that give him a chance to fight for a good position grill on the grid for Saturday`s race.
Dani Pedrosa,1’37.280 seg, 51 vueltas, 232 Km. >> Audio
“During the afternoon session we tried a different settings solution for the chassis in an effort to improve my feeling thorough all the changes of directions here, but it didn’t give the results we had expected, so I couldn’t be fast as I wanted this afternoon. We also tested some tyres, looking for the best solution for Saturday. But the big question mark is once again the weather; we can’t be sure about what the weather will do tomorrow but it looks like it may be wet so we tried to get as much work as possible done during the course of today’s two sessions. Tomorrow, weather permitting, we will keep on working on the set-up to improve our race pace”.
Nicky Hayden, 1’37.012 seg, 55 vueltas, 256 Km. >> Audio
“It’s nice to finally see a little bit of summer weather starting to hit Europe. The track is in great condition, they did a great job of having it clean, so we were able to get up to speed a lot faster than last year. All in all it’s been a pretty solid day. We made a little bit of an improvement this afternoon. I wasn’t able to improve my best time by much but I was able to be a lot more consistent out there. I was hoping to go a little quicker at the end which didn’t happen. The bike’s working pretty well here but we’re certainly going to have to step it up a bit to get in there and be really competitive. We’ve got a few ideas to try and make it a little bit better tomorrow, the rider too”.
Julián Simón, 1’40.686 secs, 45 laps, 205 Km >> Audio
“Today was a very complicated day and we were way down the leaderboard. It is proving difficult to set the motorbike up, although we are getting there little by little. In the end we tried a different tyre, we made some changes to the chassis and the suspension, and I got the sixth position. For me this is very important, and it is rewarding to see me up there, because this morning after seeing where I had finished I was a little down-hearted. Tomorrow we are going to work hard, trying to improve this bike. My arm also has improved a lot too, and today I did not have any kind of problem. We are going to take advantage of this to do some good work tomorrow”.
Esteve Rabat, 1’46.700 secs, 36 laps, 164 Km. >> Audio
“It has been a quite a complicated day. In the morning things did not go too badly, but in the afternoon we had quite a lot of difficulties, above all with the engine, it did not accelerate enough. In addition, we also had problems when opening the throttle since the bike lost adherence at the back, it was like it wanted to spit me out. We still have some work to do, because we must find new things to try and get a good set up and select the tyres as well”.
Marc Márquez, 1’46.898 secs, 33 laps, 150 Km. >> Audio
“The day went well; in the morning I just went out to get to know the circuit, nothing else, taking no risks. But in the afternoon, when we started it seemed to me that the bike was going better and I went faster. But when I started to lower my times, we realised that we were beginning to have a lot of problems and that is when I fell. I was taking too many risks. We will see if we can improve the set up by tomorrow, and so set faster times than we did today”.
