With heavy rainfall from the night before, track conditions were not favorable in the first practice session this morning. However, the grip level had improved considerably in the second session and both riders made progress with their bike set up. The Spaniard took advantage of the better conditions, lapping 2.4 seconds quicker than the morning session with a 1'39.783, faster than the Stoner's circuit record of 1'39.807 set here in last year.
The Australian first practice session's pace setter also improved his lap times by 1.3 seconds in the second session, but late in the session he experienced an issue in the rear of the bike which is still being investigated and prevented him from setting a faster time than 1'40.623, placing him in 5th at the end of the first day.
Dani Pedrosa
"This afternoon the track was a little better than in the morning and we were able to improve our lap times quite a lot and also try the hard tyres, which worked much better than the soft specification we tried this morning. As we saw today, the times will keep dropping during the weekend with more rubber on the asphalt, so we have to continue working hard on the bike. We found a good base today to move on from; we can improve every area still, focusing especially on the suspension and electronics and also care about the tyres because it's very hot out there and the tyres dropped off very quick."
Casey Stoner
"We tried a couple of things this morning but with the track being so slippery we didn't really take anything from it. This afternoon we knew what we wanted to try after the morning session but unfortunately we had some issues with the bike. We had a problem with electronics on one exit and then a strange feeling in the rear on a later exit, perhaps a stone got into the chain or something, we're not sure yet. Due to the fact we couldn't identify what the problem was, we decided to use the second bike and I only managed a few laps. A slightly disappointing afternoon and we know what we want to work on tomorrow morning."
Press release courtesy of Repsol Honda Team.
