The Repsol Honda Team began its 2009 MotoGP campaign today with Andrea Dovizioso and Dani Pedrosa joining the rest of world motorcycling’s elite riders at the Losail International Circuit in Qatar. The big news of the day was that the recuperating Pedrosa rode for the entire session and completed 17 laps, a promising sign for his chances of competing in Sunday evening’s 22-lap race.
The single 45-minute session today, which began at 10.30pm and was held under floodlights, saw Dovizioso make a rapid start - the Italian lying third for the first half of the session after immediately clocking a time in the 1m 58s bracket. Though the 23-year-old, who is new to the factory Honda squad this season, slipped to eighth in a packed middle-order, he expressed confidence that there’s more to come in tomorrow’s practice and qualifying sessions.
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In understandable contrast, Pedrosa took things steady today as he re-acclimatised to the considerable demands of riding a race bike with more than 210 horsepower. Surprisingly, the brave Spaniard actually stayed out for the longest of all the MotoGP riders when the session began, putting in nine continuous laps of the 5.380km (3.343-mile) circuit as his rivals ducked into the pits. As expected after such a long time since he last rode, Pedrosa said he had struggled to find his rhythm and ended the session at the back of the pack, 4.382s from the fastest time set by Casey Stoner’s Ducati. But the tough three-time world champion has proved his ability to perform in the face of adversity many times before, and he will return tomorrow to face the challenge once again.
Andrea Dovizioso, 1’58.506 “I was very excited this evening, it was my first official practice riding for HRC on the RC212V factory bike, so I was even more excited than last year when I made my debut in MotoGP. It’s a great feeling. Racing at night is fascinating and I enjoy starting the season here in Qatar. I’m actually feeling pretty confident. We have improved things compared to the last test in Jerez and today was all about preparation for the race. With only 45-minute practice sessions there’s less time to work on the bike and we’ve had to change our method of working to make best use of the session. We still have some issues with the machine to sort out, but I’m confident. Today we had a positive session and my team will look at making further adjustments to the settings tomorrow.”
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Dani Pedrosa, 2’01.435 “Well, I was able to ride for the whole session tonight and that was the first target for Qatar. I didn’t feel so great on the bike to be honest, but I expected this after such a long time without riding. I have to readapt to the speed, the braking points, the demands of riding a MotoGP machine again and this will take some time. My knee of course did not feel one hundred per cent and we will have to see how it improves over the course of the next practice sessions. Because I can’t bend the knee as far as I’d like, my riding position is not normal and this means I feel quite awkward on the bike at the moment. It’s too early for me to really make a judgment on the level of the bike because my pace was not fast enough today to really work on machine set-up. We knew this was going to be a challenging session and we were prepared for this, so we’ll come back tomorrow and aim to take some more steps forward.”
Kazuhiko Yamano - Team Manager “My feeling after today is positive. We welcomed Dani back and he was able to ride for the whole session, which I’m really pleased about. Of course he was very cautious and familiarising himself with being back on the bike, and also he was assessing his own physical condition. For this reason it wasn’t a typical session for him, it was more like a shake-down test. Tomorrow he will try to take further steps and improve things further. Andrea also had a positive session. He still has some areas where he’d like to improve the bike, and using his comments from today we will make a plan for adjusting the machine settings for tomorrow. Just small improvements can make a big difference to the rider and this is what we’re targeting.”
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