Dani Pedrosa has taken his first pole of the 2010 season this afternoon at the Jerez track. A very valuable pole and completely unexpected due to the problems he is having with the setup of his Honda RC212V. With this pole, Pedrosa completes the success of the Repsol riders in the official qualifying of the Spanish Grand Prix, after young Marc Márquez took the pole in 125cc.
A slight improvement in the setup of Pedrosa’s machine was already noticeable in the morning, who despite demonstrating that he was not very satisfied with its performance due to the constant vibrations and the overall nervous response, clocked up the second best time, after shaving almost seven-tenths off his time yesterday, Friday.
This afternoon, in the definitive qualifying session, Pedrosa spent the first half working on the setup of his machine and trying to find a solution to the constant and violent movements of his RC212V. From the beginning of the session, Dani had already shown signs that his team is making progress and in just a few laps, he was in fourth place, behind Rossi, Lorenzo and Stoner. For a moment, he was overtaken by De Puniet, who knocked him down into fifth but the Repsol rider rapidly recovered his position. Twenty-three minutes from the end, Pedrosa went out on the track with his first softer compound rear tyre. First tyre and first position at the top of the timesheets, all this with just 16 minutes to go before the end of the session. With the second soft tyre, Pedrosa shaved another few tenths off his time, staying at the top of the timesheets until the end of the session. First pole for Pedrosa this season, who has not clocked up the best time in a qualifying since the 2009 Indianapolis Grand Prix.
Andrea Dovizioso, ninth at the end of the qualifying session, has not had one of his best qualifying sessions in Jerez today. Despite a positive free practice in the morning, the adjustments made for the qualifying were not ideal, taking them a step back in the afternoon’s performance. Although he will start from the third row of the grid after clocking up the ninth best time, Dovizioso is optimistic and confident that, retracing the path taken and returning to the morning’s adjustments, he can be competitive in the race.
Dani Pedrosa >> Audio
“It’s always nice to get pole position and especially here because it is my home race and the support from the fans is amazing, so I’m very happy for them. I really didn’t expect this pole to be honest, but I was pushing very hard so I’m very pleased about it. Actually though, it’s not so significant for me because the important thing is the performance in the race and we still need to work very hard on this area. The new frame is delivering some improvements but we’re still not all the way there and we must continue to work on the stability because this is very important in order to be competitive over race distance. Our rivals are also showing a lot of potential so we can’t relax in any way because this will be a long, tough race. Obviously I will start the race thinking about the win, and I know there will be a lot of fans out there cheering for me so I hope we can give them something special”.
Andrea Dovizioso >> Audio
“I actually think we could have made it onto the second row today so I’m a little disappointed with the result this afternoon because it can be very important to start from the first two rows. We showed our full potential in the morning session where we were four tenths behind the fastest rider, so it’s a shame we couldn’t repeat that in qualifying. For the afternoon we made some adjustments to the electronics and machine set-up and this actually took us back a step, so tomorrow we will return to this morning’s set-up and I’m confident that will give us an improvement. Starting from the third row it will be important to make a good getaway and stay glued to the front riders because this is key to having a good race – as we saw in Qatar”.
