The 2010 MotoGP World Championship got underway today with the first free practice of the Qatar Grand Prix, a session which Andrea Dovizioso finished fourth and Dani Pedrosa eleventh. The riders experienced the same feelings as those of the last pre-season test held in the same scenario, when technical difficulties prevented Pedrosa from performing at the level he had hoped, whereas Dovizioso, making constant progress, continued to close in on the leading pack.
The first hour of the MotoGP free practice finished with mixed feelings in the Repsol Honda Team garage, in a session clearly dominated by the Australian Ducati rider, Casey Stoner, who finished half a second ahead of the second rider on the timesheets, Spaniard Jorge Lorenzo. The Australian was the only rider capable of riding at under one minute and fifty six seconds in Losail today.
Andrea Dovizioso, who made constant progress in the last winter test, continued evolving in this first session. Always riding with the leading ten in the first hour of the practice, the Italian spent the day fine-tuning the setup of his Honda RC212V, based on the adjustments that worked so well for him in the test held at the Losail circuit barely two weeks ago. His best time, achieved in lap 22 of the 23 he completed, boosted him to fourth place on the timesheets, behind Stoner, Lorenzo and Rossi. Dovizioso was one second and almost two-tenths off the Australian’s best time.
Dani Pedrosa, one second and six-tenths behind Stoner at the end of the session, significantly improved at the end of the session, but is still a long way off the best times in the category. The image of Dani battling with his factory machine entering and coming out of the turns is clear proof that his Honda RC212V is still not performing as it should, so that the Spanish Repsol Honda Team rider can unleash his full potential on the track. However, there was a slight improvement in the last fifteen minutes of the session, after making some small adjustments to his factory machine, which allowed him to climb a few positions on the timesheets, although still far from where he should be.
Dani Pedrosa, 1’57.133 secs, 21 laps, 113 km. >> Audio
“Well, we made some progress in this session and there are some modifications that we tried that improved the feeling a little bit. We should be able to continue with that through the weekend, though today we had a couple of issues with the machine which meant we lost some testing time and didn’t make as much progress as we could have done. My finishing position isn’t great today but the team is pushing very hard and we’ll continue that way. We remain optimistic for the two practice sessions tomorrow. Our lap times today were about the same as the test here three weeks ago so we’ll be looking to make a big improvement tomorrow and confirm the direction we’re going in.”
Andrea Dovizioso, 1’56.698 secs, 23 laps, 124 km. >> Audio
“I’m confident after this first session, and I think we can move further forward. We started with the same base set-up from the test here, but actually the track conditions were different and there was less grip tonight. We also discovered some small issues that didn’t allow us to use all the potential of the bike so I’m sure we can get quicker. We tried a slightly modified swing arm tonight and we felt a small improvement with it, so we’ll use that tomorrow as well. Stoner’s lap time is very fast and our gap to the front is still big but anyway we need to analyse what we’ve learned from this session and use it to mover further forward in tomorrow’s sessions. Our target for tomorrow is to lap in the low 1m 56s.”
