Dani Pedrosa will start the first ever Grand Prix of Aragon from the front row tomorrow after qualifying in third place in a closely fought session today. The Spaniard spent much of the 45-minute session at the top of the timesheets and on his final flying lap he looked on course to record his third pole position in four races, before a slight mistake saw Pedrosa run wide and lose the 0.2s advantage he’d built in the first two sectors of the lap. Still, the 24-year-old is happy to be on the front row and has a valuable clear run into Aragon’s first corner tomorrow when he’ll be looking to record his third MotoGP win in as many races.
Dovizioso was fourth in this morning’s practice session, improving his lap time from yesterday by a full second as he increased his familiarity with the impressive Aragon circuit. The 24-year-old shaved off a further seven tenths of a second in qualifying and his best lap of 1m 50.046s was just 0.1s from clinching a second row start. He never quite found a satisfactory set-up though, and in the end had to settle for eighth place and the middle of the third row. However, Dovizioso proved at Mugello and Misano this year, where he also qualified in eighth, that starting from this position need not prevent him from fighting for the podium in the race - and that will be his plan when the lights go out.
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The Grand Prix of Aragon begins at 14.00 tomorrow after a 20-minute warm-up session in the morning.
DANI PEDROSA – 3rd – 1m 49.343s +0.401s
“I’m happy to be on the front row as this was our main target for this afternoon’s session. I just made a little mistake and ran wide on my last fast lap when I was going well and was 0.2s ahead, so I think pole position could have been possible, but the front row is the important thing. So now we must just stay focused and get a good start because the first corner is quite near to the start line which means it will be important to get a clean run into there. It’s a new track where we haven’t raced before so the main question is how the tyres will work over a full race distance. Our performance over the last few races has been great and I want to try as hard as possible for the victory here. Everyone has come into this weekend with a blank sheet of paper so maybe it could be one of the most open races of the season.”
ANDREA DOVIZIOSO – 8th – 1m 50.046s +1.104s
“Our race pace is reasonable, but to be honest I’m not very happy with the session, and starting from the third row is not where we wanted to be. It’s difficult because we’re lacking some speed and we haven’t narrowed it down to one particular problem. So we need to look at the data and try to analyse what changes we can make for the warm-up tomorrow. We need to improve our speed in the centre of the corners and also the fluidity of the handling. For the race our pace is not so bad but starting from the third row is a handicap - especially because the first corner is very slow and so you cannot easily recover positions there. Still, we’ve proved previously that we can have good a race from this position and that’s what we’ll try to do again.”
TOSHIYUKI YAMAJI - REPSOL HONDA TEAM MANAGER
“Dani was looking in with a good chance of taking pole position today and perhaps if the qualifying session was still one hour long he would have achieved it because his last flying lap was faster until he ran wide. However, he is on the first row and has a good opportunity to get away at the front - this is the key result from his session. Dani’s pace has been strong all weekend and I believe he has the chance to challenge again for victory tomorrow. Andrea didn’t get the qualifying result he wanted and his team will analyse the results from today and adjust the settings in preparation for warm-up tomorrow. It’s the first ever Grand Prix of Aragon and we are determined to make it a good one for the Repsol Honda Team.”
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