The Repsol Honda Team was back in action at Sepang today following MotoGP’s traditional winter break. Riders Dani Pedrosa and Nicky Hayden got to grips with the latest version of Honda’s RC212V in typically tropical Sepang conditions, with ambient temperature reaching 35 degrees and track temperature 56 degrees.
Pedrosa set the second fastest lap today but his day ended late in the afternoon when he slid off at Turn 11, injuring his right hand. The 22-year-old, who was runner-up in last year’s World Championship, was taken to a local clinic where x-rays revealed a small fracture in the second metacarpal. Tonight Pedrosa will fly home to Spain where he will see a specialist in Barcelona.
2006 MotoGP World Champion Hayden spent the day getting a feel for the latest RC212V, riding more laps than anyone else and setting the eighth fastest lap. This is the first time that the 26-year-old has ridden a MotoGP bike since he had surgery to fix a lingering right-shoulder injury on December
1. Nicky Hayden, fastest lap: 2m 02.558s
“It’s good to be back. Coming in here yesterday it was pretty cool because I had a line of mechanics and two brand new HRC factory GP bikes waiting on me, every nut and bolt was brand new, and to me that’s pretty cool. Today didn’t go the best at the start. The chassis feels different to the prototype I tested last November. It took me a while to get a good feel from the front, though towards the end of the day we made some progress, doing some geometry stuff and a little bit of suspension. I didn’t test any tyres today, we just used reference tyres because I wasn’t going fast enough. First we had to get the bike working better. The shoulder’s better, though I still need to get some more strength in it. So that’s day one in the books. Tomorrow we’ll see if we can try the pneumatic engine and test some tyres, we’ve got plenty of work to do and it’s a long way to go to Qatar”.
Dani Pedrosa, fastest lap: 2m 01.377s
“I wasn’t pushing so hard at the time of the crash. I lost the front going into Turn 11. It was quite a big crash – the bike caught fire and I hurt my right hand. Today it was good to be riding again after the winter break, we were working on general set-up, getting a good feel for the bike before starting some comparison tests”.
