Andrea Dovizioso, fourth, completed a good day for the Repsol Honda Team.
Returning to work just a few weeks after the United States Grand Prix and, again, the Repsol Honda Team shows its competitiveness in the premier-class. In the first free practice session of the Czech Republic Grand Prix, Dani Pedrosa has set the second fastest time and Andrea Dovizioso, the fourth. The session was interrupted in the closing minutes by the onset of the rain, a rain predicted for today and the rest of the days of the Czech meeting.
The session began with all eyes on the sky and the numerous clouds gathering. There was concern about the rain starting although, fortunately, it was late arriving and only made a half-hearted appearance in the closing minutes of MotoGP, although the Moto2 riders, who rode afterwards, were able to do their first practice on a dry track.
Both Dani Pedrosa and Andrea Dovizioso started off cautiously, taking advantage of the first few laps to get the feeling and competitive pace back at the controls of their respective Honda RC212V. In the case of Pedrosa, the Spanish rider of the Repsol Honda Team seemed happy with the start of the Grand Prix and with the performance of his bike at the beautiful Czech track. The rain prevented the Repsol rider from completing the tyre testing he had planned with his team, testing which will be done tomorrow.
On the other side of the garage, Andrea Dovizioso also had a fruitful start to the Czech Grand Prix although, like the other MotoGP riders, he could not finish his testing programme for today. In the case of the Repsol Honda Team’s Italian rider, the work carried out during the practice was reflected in his final fourth position, 658 milliseconds off the best time. Happy with his first contact after the inactivity of the last two weeks, Dovizioso will concentrate his work tomorrow on improving the set up on entering turns, a point which remains his main area of focus.
Dani Pedrosa, 1’57.756 sec., 19 laps, 103 km >> Audio
“This was the first session after the summer break and I took it quite easy just to get into the rhythm and to get used to the bike again. Things went smoothly this afternoon and this was a pretty good start to our weekend. It was a pity that the session was interrupted at the end by the spitting rain, which was affecting the back side of the circuit the most, but before that came the feeling with the machine was quite good. Also because of the rain we couldn’t get through all the Bridgestone tyre testing we had planned, but it’s not a big deal. Tomorrow we will keep working on all areas of set-up and so far our direction seems on the right track”.
Andrea Dovizioso, 1’57.873 sec., 19 laps, 103 km >> Audio
“It was a good start for us and I’m reasonably happy with the job we did today – even though the lap times are not so indicative at this stage because they will come down quite a lot tomorrow if it stays dry. We didn’t have time to finish the full programme of work we had scheduled today because of the rain in the last ten minutes of the session. So we still need to do some more testing on the Bridgestone tyre options, and we’ll also make some set-up changes to get a bit more stability on the brakes. I hope that tomorrow we can have two try sessions because the forecast is uncertain, but anyway I’m confident for this race weekend”.
