Promising start of the Comunitat Valenciana Grand Prix for the Repsol riders.
The first practise day at the Valencia circuit finishes with Hayden fourth and Pedrosa sixth in MotoGP, and Aoyama sixth and De Gea seventh in the 250cc.
The good weather and temperatures which have been higher than expected played an exceptional leading role on the first practice day of the Comunitat Valenciana Grand Prix. It’s been a good day for the Repsol riders, who have been able to finish in top positions both in the 250cc and the MotoGP class.
The only exception was Bradley Smith; the young British rider crashed during the 125cc practices, fortunately without any physical consequences.Nicky Hayden and Dani Pedrosa finished fourth and sixth in the overall result of today’s both free sessions, which were dominated by Italian rider Loris Capirossi. The North American rider, who will be fighting for his first ever MotoGP world championship title on Sunday, was third in the morning session, seven thousands of a second behind the fastest time set by Valentino Rossi, and was fourth in the afternoon, improving his times and finishing eight tenths behind the fastest time. Pedrosa was seventh in the morning and sixth in the afternoon. Both riders have been trying to get a good race pace. The start has been positive and tomorrow will be the day to fight for the best place on the starting grid. It won’t be an easy job, as the Repsol Honda Team have stated themselves, because the times are levelled and a single tenth can make the difference of being in the first or the second row.
Shuhei Aoyama and David De Gea finished almost together in the 250cc. The Japanese rider managed to be only two thousands of a second faster than the Spanish rider, who has made good use of his experience on this circuit to achieve the best qualifying finish since his entry in the Repsol Honda Team 250cc. The best clock of the session was set by Hiroshi Aoyama, with the top seven riders within only one second.Bradley Smith crashed at the end of the first 125cc qualifying session and the Repsol rider had not had a very positive day. World Champion Alvaro Bautista led both sessions today with Smith finishing in a back twentieth position
Rider´s comments:
Nicky Hayden:
‘The bike’s working pretty good and I’m having fun. It wasn’t a bad start but I want to be fastest outright here in every session and every lap so I’m not totally satisfied with the day. I don’t want get into any of that ‘fastest Michelin’ or ‘fastest race tyre’ stuff and I’d have liked to have got into the 1m 32s today on race tyres. There are a few guys in front of us going quick so I definitely need to find some time. I’m having fun this weekend and my team’s doing an awesome job – Pete and the boys are really behind me and are going to ride to the end with me. Qualifying’s going to be huge tomorrow so I’ve really got to be on that front row – we’ll see what happens. There are a lot of guys going fast and not a lot separates them a couple of tenths is a lot around here and it’s a hard place to pass. I’ll just try my hardest this weekend and see what the big guy’s got planned.’
Dani Pedrosa:
‘Today we had a normal first day of practice. This afternoon we tried many different set-ups for the bike and we found some things we liked and some things that didn’t work so well, so we’ve found the right direction to take for tomorrow. It’s a very different track on the RCV compared with a 250cc bike – the MotoGP bike feels much heavier changing direction and in the many small straights you go much faster into the next corner which takes some getting used to. This is a very important race as everybody knows, so me and the team will try to do the maximum we can. I will try to do my job and also for sure we have to help Nicky to do it. It’s going to be a very exciting weekend with all the Spanish fans supporting us and being the last race of the season it’s important for everyone.’
Shuhei Aoyama:
Im not really happy with how things went today. This went really bad this morning. The suspension settings were completely wrong and I had to get back to the garage to fix them. We had a lot of work to do this morning because there was also a little problem we already had in Portugal which we had to solve as well. The afternoon was better. The position is not so bad, but I still have another day to improve, so Im looking forward to tomorrow.
David de Gea:
Ive prepared myself thoroughly for this race. I even lost a couple of kg weight to make the bike go better. I really want to do a good job because this circuit is like my home circuit. Its the circuit I like most and here I have had the best results with the bike I usually ride. After the two previous races with the 250cc bike I have things clearer and what Ive wanted to do today is to get the pace as quickly as possible to make a good job on Sunday. Its especially important to do a good job during the practices to get a better place on the grid in order to have a chance to do something that will make me and the team happy. Thats my aim and I hope to achieve it.
Bradley Smith:
Not a really good day. The first session was OK, it was not really a problem. The lap times were not great but it was nice just to get the weekend started and not be so far behind. We were trying to improve because I felt that we had some improvements to make, and we almost changed the bike completely but didnt get any improvement, everything was negative and the bike just felt worse. Well, this happens sometimes with changes when you dont know entirely which way to go. The same things happened during the qualifying. But we still we have tomorrow to work harder and catch up’
Results
MotoGP
- L.Capirossi (Ducati) 1.32.220
- R.de Puniet (Kawasaki) 1.32.08
- C.Vermeulen (Suzuki) 1.32.786
- N.Hayden (Honda) 1.33.019
- C.Stoner (Honda) 1.33.080
- D.Pedrosa (Honda) 1.33.254
250
- H.Aoyama (KTM) 1.35.982
- H.Barberá (Aprilia) 1.36.025
- J.Lorenzo (Aprilia) .36.504
- M.Simoncelli (Gilera) 1.36.724
- A.Dovizioso (Honda) 1.36.902
- S.Aoyama (Honda) 1.37.002
- D.de Gea (Honda) 1.37.004
125
- A.Bautista (Aprilia) 1.39.639
- M.Pasini (Aprilia) 1.39.796
- L.Pesek (Derbi) 1.39.877
- S.Gadea (Aprilia) 1.39.965
- H.Faubel (Aprilia) 1.40.309
20. B.Smith (Honda) 1.41.684
