The Portuguese GP that will be held tomorrow at the circuit of Estoril, promises to be exciting as there is very little between the four fastest in the category. Alongside the usual three of Valentino Rossi and the two Spaniards Dani Pedrosa and Jorge Lorenzo, was the Australian Casey Stoner, who after missing several races with physical problems returned to MotoGP in good form. Behind these four the Italian Repsol Honda Team rider, Andrea Dovizioso, was working constantly to improve the handling on his Honda RC212V with the new Öhlins suspension.
Dani Pedrosa, in spite of being one of the four fighting for the pole right to the very end of the qualifying session had to make do with 4th place on the grid – second row – in spite of the good progress made by himself and the technical team during both the morning`s free session as well as the qualifying session in the afternoon. He was 5th fastest in the morning and had a few problems with the setup, in the afternoon the modifications bore their fruit because from the start of the session he was almost a second faster – with the Repsol rider in the lead for over half an hour.
25 minutes from the end the riders began to change to softer compound tyres so that they could try to reach the pole position. Lorenzo knocked Pedrosa of the top spot and in spite of the Repsol rider, as well as Stoner and Rossi, trying to get above him many times it was the Spanish Yamaha rider who won the battle. Behind him Rossi as well as Stoner and Pedrosa fought hard but in the end they all had to give up the chase. Pedrosa, who tried to outdo his compatriot right to the final lap seemed to be on the way to a front row start but in the end had to make do with the second row, 4th fastest.
Andrea Dovizioso, working hard and against time to improve the handling on the rear end of his Honda RC212V with the new Swedish Öhlins suspension, gradually got faster as the day went by and in the end he won a third row start, 8th fastest.
Dani Pedrosa, 1’36.702 sec, 57 laps, 238 km >> Audio
“We were working hard on machine set-up this morning, though we experienced a few issues which delayed us a little this afternoon in the fight to set the best lap times on the softer Bridgestones. It’s always better to start on the front row of course, but I think fourth is not a bad starting slot. We improved our lap times significantly this afternoon and if we can make a few more improvements to the set-up, everything is possible in the race. It’s difficult to know what the rhythm and race pace will be tomorrow because maybe the conditions will be a little cooler. Casey’s performance today was impressive, so compliments to him – I’m not surprised he was this fast. My main goal for the rest of the season will be to retain third in the championship and we hope take the first step towards that goal tomorrow”.
Andrea Dovizioso, 1’37.541 sec, 54 laps, 226 km >> Audio
“We got through a lot set-up work today trying to improve the feeling from the machine at this circuit, which is quite bumpy. There’s definitely more to come, and starting from eighth obviously isn’t ideal -however with a good warm-up tomorrow we should be able to make some progress. At the moment we don’t have the rhythm to fight with the leading riders and we’ll be focussing on suspension settings to try to get closer to them. We cannot be happy with today’s result, but the important thing is to maintain concentration and try our best in the race. The characteristics of this racetrack accentuate some issues we found at the last race in Misano, but I’m confident we have a lot of potential with the Ohlins suspension. Plus we only have experience from one race, so there’s a lot more to come. We be looking to take a step forward in warm-up and to get as strong a result as possible in the race”.
