Today the 2008 pre-season came to an end for the Moto GP riders on the Losail Circuit in Qatar. The next time they don their suits and get on their bikes will be on occasion of the first offical training sessions of the Qatar Gran Prix, first test for points in the 2008 World Motorcycling Championship. This will happen next Friday 7th March, at 19:00 – local time -.
The second and definitive training session was not especially positive for the Repsol Honda Team riders, who were relegated to intermediate positions with both race tyres and qualification tyres. The lack of adherence in the front and rear was the main cause for the lagging position of the Repsol Honda Team riders. The 2006 World Champion and the 2007 World Runner-up tried throughout the event, with their respective technical teams, to find solutions in order to improve performance. Now what is left is to hope that during this pause, the HRC engineers will make use of the information collected these two days in order to get to the first test of the World Championship 2008 in shape to fight for the leading positions. Nicky Hayden completed today 94 laps on the Qatar track; his fastest lap No. 93. Teammate Dani Pedrosa has completed 75 laps, riding his fastest lap in No. 38, always using race tyres.Dani Pedrosa >> Audio It’s been quite a difficult two days here. So far we haven’t found the solution to the problems we are having. We’ve tried many different things but at the moment we aren’t getting the results we were expecting. The main problem is grip. The tyres are fine, you can see that because the guys with the 2007 Hondas and Michelins are fast, so it’s something else. Maybe riding at night has some influence on this, because there’s a lot of humidity, but that’s the same for everybody. My right hand is little bit better, I had some time to rest it after Jerez, so here I’ve been able to ride more laps than I could manage at Jerez.Nicky Hayden >> Audio I’ve enjoyed riding at night but conditions are not easy here at night – there’s the wind and the track temperature changes a lot. We tried race tyres tonight and at the end we tried a couple of qualifiers, we went quicker but we’re not where we need to be. We left Jerez feeling really confident but we’ve been brought back to reality. Nonetheless I’m happy to go racing after so much testing, that’s exciting. Now we’ve got some work to do, we need to try to come up with something to make an improvement. I think we can get the bike to hold the line better and finish the corner better. Now Honda have got a couple of days to think about stuff and I’ve got some time to go over some lines, so hopefully come Friday night we’ll be closer to where we need to be.
