Average grid positions for the Repsol riders.
Hayden and Pedrosa, seventh and eleventh in the MotoGP, Aoyama sixth in the 250cc and Smith twenty-first in the 125cc.
Bittersweet results for the Repsol riders in the second practice day of the Catalunya Grand Prix. The excellent expectations after yesterday’s results could unfortunately not be confirmed, especially in the MotoGP class. Nicky Hayden improved from tenth to seventh on the starting grid; however, Dani Pedrosa was not able to keep the great position he had achieved the previous day and will be starting tomorrow from the eleventh position of the starting grid.
The Spanish rider has still a good race pace, as he has been able to show during the practices that were dominated by Valentino Rossi. However, he was not able to set a fast lap time that would have been according to his possibilities despite trying it twice. In the last minute of the qualifying practice, while trying to make a fast lap for the second time, Dani found a lot of traffic on the track. He is obviously disappointed, but at the same time confident that the good work done during the weekend will allow him to achieve an outstanding result in the race.
In the 250 Shuhei Aoyama kept himself among the top riders. The Japanese Repsol rider was sixth yesterday and despite not improving any position today, he was able to stand the intense practice session in the quarter-of-a-litre class, in which Andrea Dovizioso managed to set the fastest time. Aoyama, who improved the lap time he had set yesterday, finished only one second behind the pole time and will fight tomorrow to get a place on the podium.
The rider with the worst luck of the practice session was the young English Repsol rider Daniel Webb, who crashed during the qualifying session and broke the radius of his left arm, thus being unable to take part in the race. Webb was having his GP debut this weekend. His team mate and fellow countryman, Bradley Smith, will take the start from the twenty-first place of the starting grid after the good result achieved yesterday under wet conditions. The fastest time of this class was set by World Championship leader Álvaro Bautista.
Rider´s comments
Dani Pedrosa:
‘My team has done a really good job from the beginning of this weekend and we’ve been quick and consistent in the other sessions. But unfortunately we didn’t make such a good plan for the qualifying tyres and at the end of the session I had a lot of traffic. On the warm up lap with my last set of qualifiers many riders were waiting for me, and then at the first corner there were four riders who were slowing down from their flying laps in the middle of the track. This cost me a lot of time and I couldn’t make a fast lap. Well, I’m 11th so I have to think about tomorrow and try to do a really great start – this is now very important – and a great race. Obviously I’m disappointed to be this far back, especially at my home race, but the race set-up of the bike is pretty good and we’ll have to see if we can handle the race pace tomorrow.’
Nicky Hayden:
‘We were alright this afternoon on race tyres, we were up there close to the front, though we’ve definitely still got some work to do if I want to be a contender tomorrow. It hasn’t been the most silky smooth day of my life. This morning I was going quite well when I had a little crash on the brakes when I tipped it in at the end of the back straight. I was just pushing hard and I was in kinda hot – it was a little bit of rider error which didn’t help and slowed down progress a little bit. Plus, we’re getting a bit too much heat in the rear tyre which is a bit of a worry for me and I might have to shake-up my tyre choice a little bit. Qualifying didn’t go just great. On my last lap I had a pretty good lap going but in the last split I just got completely hosed in last corner, a dude just pulled in front of me, and that cost me a shot at the front row. Still, we’ll give it all we’ve got in the race tomorrow.’
Shuhei Aoyama:
‘I’m more or less satisfied with the practices today, because I could have been quicker in my final fast laps, but I made some mistakes that did not allow me to improve my times. We are however in a good position and we’ve been improving step by step, as we already did in France. We have a good set-up, the tyre choice is quite clear and the rider is ready to make a good race, just like in Le Mans a couple of weeks ago. We’ll see what happens tomorrow.’
Bradley Smith:
‘I’m not really happy. I didn’t improve on my times from this morning so it wasn’t very good. We’re going to analyse the performance in the sectors now. I didn’t improve really, I tried to change a few things but still the result was the same. We’ll try to do something for tomorrow and try to improve during the warm-up, depending on the weather and then we’ll wait and see for the race. Everyone prefers dry races before it’s safer and easier but I’m faster in the rain, so it doesn’t matter, anything will work well for me.’
