The first free practice before the San Marino and Riviera di Rimini GP took place today, Friday, and ended positively for the Repsol Honda Team. The day was very hot and high levels of humidity predominated the whole time that the MotoGP riders were out on the track working, with last weekend`s race in Indianapolis very fresh in all their minds.
After demonstrating in Indianapolis that the team`s riders are at a very competitive level, in spite of a fall for the Repsol Honda Team rider Dani Pedrosa, they both got back to work today with Pedrosa following the pattern seen last week. He quickly showed how fast he was, as well as his competitive level, on the Italian track and moved into first position on the leaderboard several times during the MotoGP session. There was a alternation at the top of the classification, the lead constantly changed hands between Pedrosa, Lorenzo and Rossi. In the final 5 minutes a problem on Pedrosa`s bike caused by a water leak from the radiator when it opened stopped the Spanish rider from riding any faster, and after the 1 hour session he was 3rd, behind Rossi & Lorenzo.
Just behind these three riders in the first free practice Dovizioso gradually became the virtual owner of 4th position in this category on his “home circuit”. He started with the base used for the race in Indianapolis, and bit by bit the rider from the Italian town of Forlimpopoli gradually improved his times, at the end of the day he was 5th.
The Italian Repsol Honda Team rider went out onto the track today with a suspension prepared by the Swedish firm Öhlins instead of the usual Showa. After the tests that Dovizioso did in Czechoslovakia the Monday after the race the Italian and Honda HRC took the decision to work with this company for the rest of the season.
Dani Pedrosa, 1’36.080 secs, 26 laps, 110 km >> Audio
“My pace was quite good during this first session and I’m sure there’s still more to come tomorrow. We spent some time testing the Bridgestone tyre options and working on general set-up today, and I’m reasonably happy with how it went for most of the session. It was very hot out there and I think the temperature is due to fall later in the weekend so we’ll have to be prepared to adapt our settings for that. We can improve further I think because on my last run out we had a small problem with the radiator cap which broke and spilt some water on my hands, so I lost the final run and wasn’t able to improve my lap time at the end of the session. Still, this means we should be able to close the gap to the front tomorrow because my feeling from the machine was good today.”
Andrea Dovizioso, 1’36.316 secs, 28 laps, 118 km >> Audio
“It was great to get back out on track at Misano because this place holds so many memories for me and you can feel the special atmosphere in the paddock – even on Friday. We made some good progress today and, although it’s early days, we got some useful information riding with Ohlins for the first time here. The biggest thing you notice about this circuit is the bumps because they are quite severe even on the straight, which means it takes a while to dial the machine in and prevent it from wheelieing too much. We still have plenty of work to do in a few areas to find the right set-up, but this was a positive start to the weekend and we’ll aim to keep that going tomorrow.”
