Just four days after getting off their machines in Britain, the Repsol riders are back on the track, this time in Holland, at the legendary circuit of Assen, venue of the 80th Netherlands Grand Prix. The first free practice ended with intensive setup work by Andrea Dovizioso and Dani Pedrosa, who finished fifth and sixth respectively, on a day on which Jorge Lorenzo clocked up the fastest time.
The Repsol riders got off to a discreet start, after completing 26 laps in the case of Andrea Dovizioso – clocking up a best time of 1 minute, 35 seconds and 868 milliseconds -, and 24 for Pedrosa – with a best time of 54 milliseconds slower clocked up in his last lap -. Tomorrow, they must finish fine-tuning the setup of their machines if they want to fight for the win this Saturday. Pedrosa, who focused on the setup of the suspension, started the practice among the top five but in the second half of the session, the Spanish rider was unable to improve his times until the end, when he climbed from tenth to sixth.
Dovizioso, second in the World Championship standings, again demonstrated his consistency in the saddle of the Honda RC212V and after starting among the fastest in the class, continued to work on the setup of his machine. Without feeling too comfortable with the performance of the front wheel of his Honda RC212V on the Dutch track, Dovizioso finished this first outing on the Assen circuit in fifth place.
Dani Pedrosa, 1’35.992 seg, 24 vueltas, 109 km. >> Audio
“We’re in sixth place which isn’t actually so bad considering that we initially chose the wrong direction with our suspension settings for this track. Basically our set-up was too soft today and this cost us time – especially in T1 – which meant that our lap times suffered quite a lot. So it’s not the ideal start to the race meeting that we were hoping for, but it looks like the weather is going to be stable for the rest of the weekend so we have time to improve things a lot. We need a good result at this race to put Silverstone behind us and because last year I crashed here. The change to the circuit is good and that corner is now very fast – perhaps 270km/h in fifth gear. I’m confident that tomorrow we can do a better job than today and move forward”.
Andrea Dovizioso, 1’35.868 seg, 26 vueltas, 118 km. >> Audio
“This was a decent first session and a positive start to the weekend. Of course we still need to improve things and make up some time but I think we can do this tomorrow. We had some movement on the front end entering turns and also mid-corner and we need to sort this out in order to improve. It’s an issue that I’ve had already this season so we’re familiar with it. Today’s session was just the start to the weekend and I think we’ll see the real pace that we can run in tomorrow’s two sessions. We used the harder option Bridgestone tyres for our fast laps today, so there’s room for improvement on the softer ones tomorrow. The modifications to the track are good fun to ride although maybe it’s a little bit dangerous if a bike goes down in the right hander because it could come back onto the track in the next corner. Still, it was a positive session today and I’m looking forward to tomorrow”.
