Dani Pedrosa, Repsol Honda: 3rd.
“Third is OK and I finished right with the leaders so I’m happy for that. It was difficult to keep up with Casey and Valentino, especially in the middle of the race, but with 10 laps remaining I was able to get close again. I was actually enjoying watching them because they weren’t overtaking each other in typical places and that’s why I wanted to get in there too! However, in one part of the track I was losing a lot and I needed the other part of the track to recover, so all the time I was right there with them, but I couldn’t fight with them. I just had to wait until the last laps and hope I could find something but I wasn’t quite close enough. I want to say thank you to all the crowd who came this weekend because they gave me a lot of support and created a great atmosphere. I’ve had some good results in recent races and the performance is steadily getting better so I hope keep improving for the next races. “
Marco Melandri, Gresini Honda: 9th.
“We’re going through a rough patch. The team are giving their best, working hard, but the results just aren’t coming. The bike doesn’t give me any confidence and I can’t ride it how I want. I’m really disappointed. We’ve struggled with the front end all weekend and after a few laps I lost confidence in it – it was skipping around and it was really hard to ride. We’ll have to make some drastic changes. ”
Nicky Hayden, Repsol Honda: 11th.
“Through this weekend I’d been moving up and getting faster and faster in every session and going up a few places. I got a decent start in the race and I was looking to get a decent result here because my pace in the warm-up was reasonable too. The race was a tough one though. Somewhere along the way it looks like the rear tyre turned on the rim and unbalanced it, which meant it started to vibrate and chatter really badly - especially in the last five or ten laps I could hardly ride it. After that I just started losing positions and it wasn’t a fun race because it was hard to tip it into any of the corners. We didn’t need that problem today so we’ll just have to look into why it happened and move on to the next one at Donington. “
Shinya Nakano, Konica Minolta Honda: 15th.
“It was a very frustrating and difficult race for me. I said yesterday that I had a good feeling in hot conditions but we just didn’t have that today for some reason. When I pushed hard the bike would run wide in the corners. I’m looking forward to tomorrow and having more time out on the track so we will be working hard again to make more improvements. This is important as we still have a further two races to come this month. ”
Kenny Roberts Jnr, KR212V: 16th.
“Kurtis did really good. He was much quicker than I was in the beginning of the race and I was squaring off all the corners and I couldn’t get any grip to stay with them guys. And then my bike…the power started coming around, the grip level started getting closer front and rear. Just was trying everything I could to get up with him. Once I got within a second, from then on I was just trying to pass him, if he made a mistake at all. And he didn’t make a mistake, didn’t get off line. He was braking hard, going through the corner the same speed as me, but accelerating smoother, because I was trying to get a jump on him, so I would just spin. And I finally was able to get a draft off him down the front straight. And then I concentrated on Carlos (Checa) ahead and then he had something go wrong with his tire or bike. ”
Carlos Checa, LCR Honda: 17th.
“This is a difficult moment for me, I cannot remember when I had a worse feeling in a race and this is not the result I wanted. Everyone in the LCR team has worked very hard over the weekend but we could just not find the balance or feeling that gave me any confidence to push. It is not fun to race like this but now we must look forward and hope the situation can improve. “
Kurtis Roberts, KR212V: 18th.
“Yeah, it was the first time I’ve ever been in front of Kenny. That probably screwed me up more than anything, because I thought I heard him back there. But what really screwed me up halfway through the race, just for like a lap-I thought he was right behind me the whole race-and it was plus 1.6 seconds. Because I’d see his lap times and I wasn’t paying that much attention to the lap board at first. And I would see he’d have a faster one than me. I figured he’d be right behind me. And then he kind of caught me off guard. And trying to catch (Carlos) Checa, I started rushing everything a bit. I just didn’t have any grip from the start. I was just hung out to dry, just sliding the thing everywhere. I knew I was catching Checa, but Kenny, when he passed me, I thought I screwed up. I didn’t even realize he was towing me along that good. But it was fun. When you watch Little Kenny, he’s Mister No Mistake and I make a lot of mistakes. ”
Kenny Roberts – Team Principal.
“I’d never seen them race like that at this level, of course, but it would be better if we were racing further up the field instead of where we are at the moment. It’s apparent that the motor doesn’t accelerate, but then we have no grip. I think that we are learning, but it’s going to take six weeks to build something different. We just have not been anywhere all year, because it doesn’t work, it just doesn’t work. When they turn it on, it just doesn’t go. Of course the motor isn’t the best. But it’s still not as bad as what we’re riding. The tires I think are actually a little more of a problem than the motor, because we can’t seem to get grip. So either the chassis’s not getting grip or the motor’s not getting grip, but we don’t know which one that is. ”
Toni Elias, Gresini Honda: dnf – technical problem.
“I’m really disappointed because I was having a good race. I got a good start and it looked like 5th place was a real possibility until the engine packed up on the 14th lap. I don’t know exactly what it was. These things happen in racing but I’m really disappointed because this was my home race in front of all my fans. ”
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