Repsol Honda’s Dani Pedrosa finished on top of the timesheets today in first practice for the German Grand Prix and laid the foundations for a strong weekend at the Sachsenring. The 24-year-old lapped consistently quickly on his RC212V and finished the practice period a significant 0.274s ahead of his nearest rival in a very close session where the top 13 riders were covered by less than one second. Dovizioso was just 0.875s back from his Repsol Honda team-mate, which translated to tenth position due to the closeness of the times.
Pedrosa once again displayed his affinity with the tight and technical German track by setting four laps in today’s session that were quicker than any other rider. Tomorrow he will be looking for a repeat of the pole position he secured here in 2006 during his debut MotoGP season. Dovizioso is also confident of improving his pace and position in tomorrow’s two practice periods after losing time at the start of this afternoon’s session with an electronic issue. Once that was ironed out, the 24-year-old Italian went steadily quicker and would doubtless have finished higher up the timesheets given equal track time to his rivals.
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The hot weather from the last race at Barcelona has followed the MotoGP series to Germany, with today’s session taking place in 36 degrees ambient temperature. Forecasts predict the possibility of a thunderstorm for tomorrow, with Sunday’s 30-lap race, starting at 14.00, expected to be dry.
DANI PEDROSA – 1st – 1m 22.521s
“It’s great because for the first time this season I’ve got the best time on Friday and this is a very positive step for us. We normally struggle initially, but today we did a very good job in first practice and I’m very happy for this. It’s also a good result because tomorrow it could rain and so it was very important to get the basic set-up fixed on the first day here. I hope we will have one more practice session in the dry tomorrow, but it looks likely that at least one session will be wet. Today we were focused mainly on trying the different Bridgestone tyre compounds available for the race, and we were able to be fast with the soft and also with the hard option. For tomorrow we need to keep working on the suspension and the electronics because I think we can still improve in some parts of the lap.”
ANDREA DOVIZIOSO – 10th – 1m 23.400s +0.879s
“Tenth position does not reflect our true potential here and we have the chance to move forward with more work on the set-up and also on the electronics to find the best balance for this track. We had an electronics issue at the beginning of the session so we lost fifteen minutes, and this meant we couldn’t get through all the set-up work that we had planned. If the weather stays like this tomorrow and we can continue testing in dry conditions then I’m very confident about our chances of climbing nearer to the front and qualifying well. Dani’s lap times were really fast today and he is the only one to have such a strong pace. We’ll look to close the gap tomorrow.”
TOSHIYUKI YAMAJI - REPSOL HONDA TEAM MANAGER
“This was a good start to the weekend for Dani and he’s looking in promising shape for the rest of the meeting. He was able to complete consistently fast laps and find a good direction for machine settings and also tyre choice. Andrea lost a little time at the beginning of the session with an electronics issue and so he was playing catch-up for the remainder of this afternoon. He is also working in the right direction, however, and we are confident both riders can qualify well tomorrow.”
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