On the second of the three free training sessions scheduled at the Malaysian circuit of Sepang, the two Repsol Honda Team riders have continued today with the intensive and hard pre-season work. The two Repsol Honda Team riders have spent the second day making adjustments to the suspension, electronics, engines, and other adjustments, as well as working intensively on testing the tyres supplied by Bridgestone.
The session started at 10.00am and finished at 5.30pm, and although rain threatened to interrupt the training sessions around 2.30pm, the weather finally remained in the background and the day has passed without any problems.
Today, Dani Pedrosa has taken a step forward compared to yesterday, mainly concentrating on fine tuning his bike and improving its performance on the new Bridgestone tyres. Throughout the day, Pedrosa has been one of the four quickest riders, taking turns with Stoner, Rossi and Capirossi at the top of the classification. Knocking almost half a second off his best time yesterday, the Spanish Repsol Honda Team rider finally achieved the fourth best time of the day, stopping the clock 3 tenths of a second from the best time achieved by the Australian Stoner and his Ducati. Pedrosa clocked up his best time in lap 30 of the 51 he completed at the Sepang Circuit.
At the end of the training session, Dani sat down with his team and they finally made some decisions together: the Spanish Repsol Honda Team has brought forward his return home one day in order not to strain his left knee. Pedrosa, who injured his knee during the Australia Grand Prix in October 2008, underwent surgery at the beginning of December and since then he has been recovering from his injury. After two positive training days, all that is left is a race simulation tomorrow, but due to the trouble the Repsol rider’s knee is giving him, they have cautiously chosen to end the training sessions early and give Pedrosa more time to finish recovering. Dani Pedrosa should not be back on his bike before the next training sessions that the team will hold in Qatar, on 1, 2 and 3 March.
Andrea Dovizioso, after improving his position on the bike to make it more comfortable and feel better yesterday, has concentrated today on the hard task of adapting his official Honda RC212V to the Bridgestone tyres that the Anglo-Japanese firm will supply all of the MotoGP riders. Dovizioso has completed a total of 44 laps of the Malaysian circuit, reducing his best time from yesterday by 6 tenths.
Dani Pedrosa >> Audio
“I’m satisfied of the work done today, we focused on chassis and suspension and also worked with tyres in order to find the best compromise with our machine. Today I was much more comfortable on the bike, I could be faster from the first laps and we could work on the bike testing all the items we had to test for this test session. In fact I know this bike, which is an evolution of last year bike, and this gives me an advantage compared to last year, when the bike was completely new for me. We have pointed out the aspects we want to improve for Qatar. Tomorrow a race simulation was scheduled but at the end we decided to end the test session because today I could only do 5,6 laps in a row and tomorrow I won’t be able to cover the race distance. Last December, in fact, I underwent an intervention to the left knee for the consequences suffered when I slid off in Phillip Island during the last race in October. I only need some rest”.
Andrea Dovizioso >> Audio
“Today we focused on bike set up and we continued evaluating the chassis. We found some very good points and some aspects that need to be improved. My lap times have improved today even if we haven’t found the best compromise at the moment, this is a good feeling because I could be fast today also without the best configuration. Tomorrrow we will continue testing and I’d like to define with the team the direction to follow for next test session scheduled at the beginning of March in Qatar”.
