Like all the Saturdays in the legendary Spanish GP it was sunny and hot, and as always there was the deafening noise of motorbike racing fans roaring the whole day, before during and after the final MotoGP classification session. The Repsol Honda Team rider, Dani Pedrosa, who together with Montesa Honda S.A a subsidiary of Honda in Spain is promoting a new campaign to improve motorbike rider safety, set the second best time for tomorrow’s grid. The fairing on Dani Pedrosa’s RC212V is carrying the logo “Seguridad Honda” the whole of the race weekend, in support of the efforts being made by Montesa Honda to improve rider safety.
After the rain in Qatar and Japan, the riders finally got some good weather and today the crowd was treated to a spectacular classification session, with a hard-fought battle between the two most popular riders among Spanish fans. Jorge Lorenzo and Dani Pedrosa alternated at the top of the leaderboard in the final five minutes of the session, whilst Rossi and Stoner, in spite of attempting it several times, were not able to go faster than the the two Spanish riders at any moment. In the morning, during the free practice, the Spanish Repsol Honda Team rider showed that the electronic problems encounterd on the Friday afternoon had disappeared, and he set a fantastic time – 1.39’42 secs. – which saw him at the top of the morning classification.
In the final classification session, for the Spansih GP starting grid positions, Pedrosa did not wait long to go to the top of the classification. In just 4 laps he was the fastest on the track, afterwards he did a series of eleven laps at a fast pace. Lorenzo snatched the provisional pole away from him thirteen minutes from the end and when he was in the pits. At that very instant an intense duel began between the two Spanish riders.
His first attempt, with just over 11 minutes to go to the end of the session, took Pedrosa back into first position, but a few moments later Lorenzo was back in pole position, with Dani two tenths behind, Stoner was at 6 tenths and Rossi further behind. Pedrosa went back to the pits to make some small adjustments to his bike and to watch his rivals on the monitors, and then 7 minutes from the end he went out onto the track to make his final attempt. In the end he was just five tenths behind Lorenzo, therefore Pedrosa had to make do with second position on the starting grid, this weans he is on the first row of the grid tomorrow for the Spanish GP.
Pedrosa’s teammate in the Repsol Honda Team, the Italian Andrea Dovizioso, did not have an easy day on the track today. With a lot of work still left to do – he has new material to try – Dovizioso set the fifth best time this morning, and in the afternoon in the classification session, he was eighth. He set practically the same time as in the morning session, affected by the wind that did not let him round off the adjustments he had tried out in the morning as he would have liked.
Dani Pedrosa: 2nd 1m 38.933s >> Audio
“I’m happy because we’ve improved a lot from yesterday and we’re starting from the front row. This is always important – but especially at my home race. It was very windy this afternoon which made it quite difficult to ride with a consistent line and keep the rhythm on the bike, but still, my pace was good and I’ll go into the race with a lot of confidence. We still have some work to do to improve our set-up for the race but I’m happy with how we’ve progressed so far this weekend. Tomorrow is the important day though. There will be a lot of fans out there supporting me and the team and I really hope I can get a good result for them. If I get a start like I did at Motegi then that will help!”
Andrea Dovizioso: 8th 1m 39.966s >> Audio
“It has been a tricky session for everybody because it was really windy and this meant we couldn’t confirm some set-up improvements that we were testing. This morning we made some adjustments that gave us some positive feedback, and we wanted to keep working on them, but we couldn’t test properly this afternoon because of the strong wind. Still, we improved our race pace which is very important, it’s just a pity that we will start from the third row. I think I could have been on the second row but during my fast lap I had a moment and lost the front in T4. Tomorrow morning we will work on further improving the feeling of mid-corner stability at the front. For the race I’ll have to make a good start because we cannot afford to lose contact with the guys in front.”
