The Spanish rider dominates today’s two practice sessions. The first row will be completed by his two Repsol Honda Team mates, with Stoner second and Dovizioso, third.
Dani Pedrosa was the main protagonist of the second consecutive day of practice at the Sepang circuit after dominating the last free practice session that took place this morning and achieve the pole position for the Malaysian Grand Prix in the qualifying. The Repsol rider will start from the first position of the grid in a first row monopolized by the Repsol Honda Team riders, where Casey Stoner will be in second place and Andrea Dovizioso third.
After the good start he had yesterday, Pedrosa kept setting the pace in this second-to-last round of the World Championship. In the third free session, the Repsol rider was the only one able to lap under two minutes and two seconds, two tenths ahead of Marco Simoncelli, who was second. Behind the Italian, Andrea Dovizioso, signed the third fastest time and Casey Stoner was fourth.
In the timed session, a crash suffered by Dani Pedrosa in the first minutes of the practice seemed that it might stop the Repsol rider, who saw how the front-end of his bike blocked in the last corner of the circuit, a long left-hand corner before reaching the main straight. In that moment Andrea Dovizioso was leading the times sheets, but by mid session Pedrosa had returned to the track with his second bike and, after improving his times steadily, took the lead of the classification.
In the following lap, the Spaniard broke again the two minutes and two seconds barrier, although fifteen minutes before the end he saw Dovizioso trying to fight for the fastest time with him. Only a few laps later, Stoner joined the battle for the pole position, showing the great level of the Repsol Honda Team riders in Sepang.
The World Champion took the first place, but five minutes from the end, Pedrosa improved his register by another three tenths and stopped the clock in a definitive 2 minutes, 1 second and 462 thousandths, that gave him his second pole position of the season. In the last two minutes, Stoner was able to lap in the same times as Pedrosa, with almost identical register, but finished 29 thousandths behind his team mate, a time that will allow him to start in front of Andrea Dovizioso, who tomorrow will complete the last row.
Dani Pedrosa >> Audio
FP3 – 2:01.769, 16 laps, 89 km.
QP – 2:01.462, 21 laps, 117 km.
“It was a very difficult session, extremely hot, I couldn’t breathe inside the helmet. We had a small crash in the front that I didn’t expect, but was able to go back and go faster and take my second pole of the season. I thought I would be able to improve a little more at the end and get closer to the time I did yesterday, but I found some traffic on my final run. Anyway, it’s good to be on pole and I hope our race pace can be even better. We have to work on the set up and make a good rear tyre choice because our rivals are also very strong. It’s going to be very physically demanding for everybody. To have three Repsol Honda riders on the front row is very good, but we cannot forget the other rivals and we must keep focused to finish the weekend in the best way”.
Andrea Dovizioso >> Audio
FP3 – 2:02.081, 18 laps, 100 km.
QP – 2:01.666, 23 laps, 128 km.
“I’m really happy with this front row and even more satisfied with my race pace. We have improved a lot, reducing the gap to two tenths after being 1.4 seconds behind in FP2 and 0.8 behind in FP3. We were consistent and fast both with soft and hard tyre, meaning that it’s possible to race with both of them. This afternoon the conditions were really demanding, it was very hot and there was no grip but we were able to be consistently fast so we go into the race very strong. With such conditions here it’s impossible to push 100% for 20 laps so it will be very important to make a strategy for the race and to manage the tyres. I really like this track and tomorrow it would be fantastic to repeat a Repsol Honda 1, 2, 3 on the Podium, but… in the reverse order!”.
Casey Stoner >> Audio
FP3 – 2:02.169, 14 laps, 78 km.
QP – 2:01.491, 20 laps, 111 km.
“I tried to steal pole but it wasn’t really our day today. We tried a few different things in set up but we haven’t really gone the right direction at all this weekend. In qualifying we tried to find another path to go but we just haven’t been able to get grip along with turning, we can find one or the other but at best they are both average so we have some improvement to make for tomorrow. Our race pace isn’t too bad, we’ve looked worse than everyone else because we’ve been running on the harder tyre all weekend but once we put the soft tyres on the bike worked a little better”.
