The Repsol rider dominates the two practice sessions held today in Silverstone, where Andrea Dovizioso set the fifth fastest time of the day
The first day of practice for the British Grand Prix saw again the most dominant version of Casey Stoner. Repeating his good performance in Catalunya and France, the Australian rider of the Repsol Honda Team left no chance to his rivals in the two first free practice sessions, which he commanded comfortably. With Dani Pedrosa absent, his only team mate at Silverstone, Andrea Dovizioso, finished in fifth position.
With two consecutive victories in the last two races, Casey Stoner has shown he is the strongest MotoGP rider in this part of the championship and, as he did at Le Mans and Catalunya, led the times classifications of the two first free practice sessions. Not even the rain that fell between sessions was able to slow down the Repsol rider, who outperformed the rest of competitors by 659 thousandths in the first session -held on dry tarmac-, and 797 thousandths in the second, with quickly drying but still wet track.
Beside him at the Repsol Honda Team garage, Andrea Dovizioso completed today 34 laps to the English tack, with a fastest time in the morning of 2 minutes, 4 seconds an 910 thousandths, a bit more than one second slower than his team mate. In the second session, the Repsol rider looked for a good set-up that would make the RC212V more manageable, as the many bumps of the track made the riding difficult. Nevertheless, the short storm that fell during part of the second 125cc session did not allow him to draw any conclusions. Dovizioso finished sixth a little more than 3 seconds behind his team mate, Casey Stoner.
Andrea Dovizioso >> Audio
“This afternoon the track conditions were difficult especially because there are different types of tarmac which drain differently. For example, T1 and T4 were draining very well, whilst it was wet in T2 and T3. It took me a while to find the feeling and we struggled with the traction control set up. We worked on the different settings and I think that we can improve tomorrow. It will be important to practice again in dry conditions tomorrow as we did this morning in FP1, but all in all FP2 was also important because we may find similar conditions in the race”.
Casey Stoner >> Audio
“I’m pretty happy with how the day has gone after mixed conditions, we’ve seen a dry track, a wet track and then a 50/50 track so it’s been interesting to have these variants throughout the day, but in general the bike has worked well. We used both bikes today and in the wet one set up seems to work pretty well, but with wet weather forecast for the rest of the weekend we still have some things we want to improve to make the bike work better giving us some more edge grip and traction. The track seems pretty good but some of the older sections are retaining a lot more water which is causing difficulties as in some areas you could be out on slicks but other parts are drenched. Looking at the way the wet tyres are working at the moment we shouldn’t have too much of a problem though, the track seems to be kind on the Bridgestone tyres and not destroying them and even after this afternoon’s session we didn’t have a too big a problem with them”.
