The first day of free practice for the Australian Grand Prix started with harsh weather conditions determining the first outing at the Phillip Island track for the World Championship riders. Inactive for the last two races – Japan and Malaysia -, Dani Pedrosa completed six laps of the Australian circuit to carry out a preliminary evaluation of his physical condition while Andrea Dovizioso, who started with good pace, finished sixth.
Exactly two weeks ago, in the first practice of the Japanese Grand Prix, Dani Pedrosa fell during the first moments of the free practice, fracturing his left collarbone. This morning, the Repsol Honda Team rider again put on his racing leathers and got on his Honda RC212V on a day on which caution was the main priority in the Repsol Honda Team garage.
Pedrosa did seven laps of the Australian track to get to grips with the feel and check his physical condition, setting a fastest time up amongst the top ten. Enough for a first outing, the Repsol rider opted to not go out again and to rest, already looking towards tomorrow. His best personal time left him off the day’s leaderboard, although today´s times are for the first free practice and are not of great importance.
His team-mate, Andrea Dovizioso, again started amongst the fastest of the category, topping the timesheets for the first half of the practice when the asphalt was at its wettest. The Italian rider of the Repsol Honda Team completed 26 laps, setting a best time of 1 minute, 42 seconds and 271 milliseconds, a little more than one second off the fastest time of the day, set by Jorge Lorenzo.
His personal best time was set around halfway through the session which began in light rain and with high winds blowing across the Phillip Island Circuit, on which temperatures did not exceed 10 ºC. As the asphalt dried, Dovizioso was not able to lower his times but caution did not allow for any big risk-taking today. Although, according to the weather forecasts, tomorrow will again be a tough day with these difficult conditions.
Dani Pedrosa, 1’51.210 sec, 7 laps, 31 km. >> Audio
“The plan today was simply to check my condition on the bike – in these conditions I didn’t want to take any unnecessary risks. What I can say is that I had some strength to move on the bike and put pressure on the handlebars which is good. However, I didn’t feel very comfortable with the leathers because they were tight and there was pressure – but even with that I could do some laps and tomorrow I will try again – we will go step-by-step. Now it’s quite painful but we will see how the pain goes through the night and tomorrow we will take another step. We knew it wouldn’t be easy but I just hope that the effort is worth it in the end. To ride in wet conditions is more smooth than in the dry, but also more risky. The asphalt today was very very cold and here it’s a problem because on the right hand turns you don’t have any grip at all. The hardest point was braking, changing direction and in the right hand corners because I have to stretch my arms a lot – but I hope we can work a little bit on the leathers to make it more comfortable for tomorrow. Afterwards I went to the Clinica Mobile and they told me that now I need to relax the muscles. We’ll see how it goes tomorrow”.
Andrea Dovizioso, 1’42.271 sec, 26 laps, 116 km.
“It was an interesting session today and it was worth pushing hard because at this circuit we can have this type of conditions for the race, so we need to know what to expect. The problem was that the track conditions changed a lot during the session however. We used wet tyres for the whole time and at the beginning of the session when it was fully wet we were quite fast compared to the other riders. On my second time out of the pits there was almost a dry line all the way round the circuit, but we didn’t try slick tyres because the temperature was really low and it would have been risky to ride on slicks before they got up to temperature. So we stayed on wet tyres even though they were very worn by the end of the session. It was very windy and at the end of the straight the bike wheelies a lot so it was an important test of the electronic controls. We still have work to do on the machine settings, but we understand the direction to work in tomorrow and I think we can move forward”.
