The German Grand Prix has begun with a great Dani Pedrosa, on really good form at the Sachsenring track where, at the end of the first day of testing he topped the timesheets with a time of 1 minute, 2 seconds and 521 milliseconds ahead of Casey Stoner and Nicky Hayden. His team-mate, Andrea Dovizioso was slowed down by some problems at the start of the session and was behind the whole practice, finishing the session with a time of 1 minute, 23 seconds and 400 milliseconds, eight tenths off his team-mate.
Following his usual work schedule, Dani Pedrosa started the first free practice of the German Grand Prix calmly, working step by step on the feel of his Repsol Honda RC212V. Halfway through the session, the Repsol rider had already placed himself second behind the Australian rider Casey Stoner but, towards the end, he pushed one step further and went on to take the lead of the timesheets. With a very fast pace, Pedrosa continuously reduced his times to finish with a 274 millisecond advantage over Stoner, almost half a second over the third-placed rider – Nicky Hayden -, and more than six tenths over the fourth.
On the other side of the garage, Andrea Dovizioso went out a fair amount less than his Repsol Honda Team-mate, having had to do more work on the set up of his bike. The Italian rider made slow progress and, although he did ride fourth, he finished the day in tenth place, 879 milliseconds off his team-mate Pedrosa. At the short German track – just 3 kilometres, 671 metres – the results have put a lot of pressure on the majority of the grid and the Italian rider finished just two tenths off the fourth-placed rider on a day when the top thirteen classified riders finished within a second of each other.
Dani Pedrosa >> Audio
“It’s great because for the first time this season I’ve got the best time on Friday and this is a very positive step for us. We normally struggle initially, but today we did a very good job in first practice and I’m very happy for this. It’s also a good result because tomorrow it could rain and so it was very important to get the basic set-up fixed on the first day here. I hope we will have one more practice session in the dry tomorrow, but it looks likely that at least one session will be wet. Today we were focused mainly on trying the different Bridgestone tyre compounds available for the race, and we were able to be fast with the soft and also with the hard option. For tomorrow we need to keep working on the suspension and the electronics because I think we can still improve in some parts of the lap”.
Andrea Dovizioso >> Audio
“Tenth position does not reflect our true potential here and we have the chance to move forward with more work on the set-up and also on the electronics to find the best balance for this track. We had an electronics issue at the beginning of the session so we lost fifteen minutes, and this meant we couldn’t get through all the set-up work that we had planned. If the weather stays like this tomorrow and we can continue testing in dry conditions then I’m very confident about our chances of climbing nearer to the front and qualifying well. Dani’s lap times were really fast today and he is the only one to have such a strong pace. We’ll look to close the gap tomorrow”.
