This morning the last Grand Prix of the season began in Valencia with the first two free practice sessions, at the end of which, Andrea Dovizioso and Dani Pedrosa ended up in fifth and twelfth place, respectively. Two sessions in which the Repsol riders started to make adjustments to the set up of their Honda RC212Vs, a job for which the Spanish rider did not feel sufficiently well-recovered.
After the wind and rain of the previous championship meetings, today the sun shone over the Valencian track allowing the first day of free practices to go ahead as normal. Conditions which Andrea Dovizioso made the most of to complete a good day in which he was third in the first session and finally fifth in the second, 780 milliseconds off the best time of the day set by Jorge Lorenzo.
The day was more difficult for his Repsol Honda Team-mate, Dani Pedrosa, who continued to suffer from his fractured collarbone injury incurred in Japan. At the Portuguese Grand Prix, during the race, Pedrosa lost feeling in his left hand and, in Valencia, this loss of feeling is occurring again. Although he continues to suffer muscular pain, this loss of feeling is worrying him most and is the main cause of his performance on track. Today Pedrosa set the twelfth fastest time in the two free practice sessions.
Dani Pedrosa, 1’33.927 sec, 42 laps, 168 km >> Audio
“The feeling is more or less the same as in Portugal except that this is a left-hand circuit which means there is a lot of braking into left corners – this makes it hard for me. I’m still not going really fast and because this is a short lap, 1.2s is quite a big gap to the front. Still, we have two more sessions of practice to go and I have the chance to improve my pace in those and move closer to the fastest times. We have to think about the race and improve things step by step tomorrow because there will be a lot of fans here supporting me and I really want to be ready for Sunday”.
Andrea Dovizioso, 1’33.470 sec, 40 laps, 160 km >> Audio
“I have always struggled on this track but today we have got off to a good start and I’m confident on the bike. We did some useful work today and the lap times from both the morning and afternoon sessions were reasonable, although they are not fast enough yet to be competitive in the race so we have more work to do. We tested some different set-up options and gained a clearer idea of the direction we will follow tomorrow. I’m fast in the first two sections of the lap, while I’m losing quite a lot in the last two sections. Our main area to improve is entering the corners and if we do this then it will give us a time advantage for the whole lap. I’m confident that we can move forward from our current position”.
