Nicky Hayden, second, brushing the pole position in Turkey under the rain.
Team mate Dani Pedrosa, who had a light crash this morning, finishes sixteenth.
The weather forecasts had predicted rain for today and tomorrow and so far, they have been 100% right. Istanbul woke up this morning under a light rain and a completely covered sky, and remained like that all day. In view of this situation, the 125cc and 250cc riders knew that the times that would decide the places on starting grid would be those set yesterday, with Alvaro Bautista on pole in the eighth-of-a-litre class and Jorge Lorenzo leading the quarter-of-a-litre. Thus, today was an important day in order to get ready for the ride on the wet track under conditions that would be probably very similar to those they are going to find tomorrow, but had no meaning for the grid formation.The situation in the MotoGP class was different and the times set yesterday and this morning had no value at all, because the places on the starting grid had to be decided this afternoon, under the rain, in the single qualifying practice of this class. Good and bad luck for the riders of the Repsol Honda Team, in the decisive afternoon timed session.
In the morning, Hayden had finished in a back fifteenth position, and Dani Pedrosa, light crash included under a constant rain shower, was twelfth. In the afternoon’s timed session, Dani Pedrosa fought hard, lap after lap, to get used to his bike under such hard conditions, finally setting the sixteenth fastest time, thus getting a place on the sixth row of the starting grid. More in the front, his team mate was battling against class rookie Chris Vermeulen for the pole and they both had an exciting and intense duel which was finally won by the Australian Suzuki rider by only 2 tenths of a second. Third was Gibernau and fourth the overall leader Loris Capirossi, who finished 9 tenths behind the top time.
The Repsol riders of the 250cc class finished in intermediate positions after this second qualifying session, with Shuhei Aoyama eleventh and Sebastián Porto twelfth. In the first qualifying session staged yesterday on the wet, Porto was ninth and Aoyama fourteenth, so they will be starting tomorrow from the third resp. fourth row of the starting grid.
Many crashes in the minor class, fortunately, all of them light ones. Young Bradley Smith was counting on the second qualifying session of this afternoon to catch the slipstream of another rider, improve the time he had set yesterday and get a better place on the grid. However the rain hindered him from putting his plan into practice, so he had to settle for the twenty-sixth position and a place on the seventh row of the starting grid.
Rider´s comments
Nicky Hayden,
38 laps, 202’92 Km.
‘I felt really good out there today. I’m happy with the front row start and I’m happy with my confidence. It felt like I could make a mistake and my laptime would still be faster so I’m pleased about that. My goal for the session was to be on the front row but I’m not happy with myself for making that mistake in the last split – it was a club-racing move. I knew I had a good lap going and I went through the fast 5th gear corner quicker than I had before in the wet, and then I tried to brake a little deeper into the next corner but it was never going to work! I was actually looking forward to a wet qualifying session at some point because we’ve done a lot of testing in the wet over the winter. But I was hoping for a wet one on a weekend where I was struggling, and having been fastest in the dry yesterday I was hoping it wouldn’t rain today. We’re going to bring all we’ve got for tomorrow’.
Dani Pedrosa,
33 laps, 176’22 Km.
‘Today hasn’t gone too well for me. I don’t feel like saying so much about today because this morning I crashed – it was a human mistake – but still I crashed. And then in the afternoon I qualified 16th on the 6th row of the grid and this is too far from the leaders, so I’m not so happy about it, but I tried maxiumum. When crashed I just tried to brake and I was completely upright so it’s very strange – the front wheel just locked. All the time I am struggling with grip and I am trying to find more – that is why I’m so far back on the grid. Tomorrow it’s almost certain to be raining too, so we’ll just have to try to finish the race and get more experience in the wet
Sebastián Porto,
31 laps, 165’54 Km.
‘Unfortunately we haven’t been able to improve the time set yesterday, which isn’t bad, as I said yesterday, but the bike didn’t work so well and we had a lot to improve today. Unfortunately the rain hindered us from doing so, but at least we were able to work on the wet, and this morning things went quite well. We made some changes in the afternoon that did not have the results expected. Let’s see what happens tomorrow. If it rains, I think that we’ll be able to do a good job and if it doesn’t, it’ll be a mystery. We’ll always look for improvement and tomorrow, during the race, we’ll try to be as much in the front as possible, as always.’
Shuhei Aoyama,
38 laps, 202’92 Km.
‘Today I had my first experience with Dunlop tyres on wet conditions, because last year I raced on other tyres, so I had no reference at all as regards their behaviour, but I’m happy, because their performance is really good. I hope for similar conditions tomorrow, because if it rains, I do not dismiss a good result. If it is a dry race, then it will be a bit more complicated to make a good race. Let’s see what the weather has prepared for us tomorrow.’
Bradley Smith,
23 laps, 122’82 Km.
‘For the limited amounts of laps I had, I’m happy. It was the first qualifying ever in the rain and this is also a new track so to ride in the rain was completely different and to find the grip level was a bit difficult, but it was good, more or less& I still went behind Luthi on one of my three fast laps. I was gaging myself against him but not really riding so fast. When I came in we changed the rear sprocket so I had more rpm on the straight and I could get to sixth, so the bike was a lot better. I had only two laps before the finish and I dropped maybe three seconds of my normal time so I think that if we would have had more laps it would have been better for me. I think tomorrow’s conditions will be rain, and at the moment I would prefer a wet race than a dry race because I think I could do much better in the rain. Let’s wait and see. We just have to get a good start and see what happens.’
