Repsol Honda rider and World Championship leader Dani Pedrosa had a good day at the Sachsenring today, topping this morning’s free practice session aboard his RC212V and qualifying a promising second fastest in this afternoon’s qualifier. Team-mate Nicky Hayden was also impressive this morning, running third fastest, but wasn’t quite able to repeat the performance in qualifying, coming out eighth.
The morning session started on a wet track following an earlier downpour but by the end of the hour Pedrosa and Hayden were both running fast on race tyres, the only riders to improve on their Friday pace. Pedrosa, who scored his seventh front-row start of the year today, still has some further fine-tuning to do before the race as he works to defend his championship points lead. Hayden meanwhile is confident of his race pace and will be focusing all his attention on getting a flying start from the third row to get him into the first corner in a front-running position.
Dani Pedrosa, second fastest, 1m 21.420s
“Today went quite well for us, so I’m happy with my second position on the grid. I didn’t expect to achieve this result because we were using up the qualifying tyres in the last section of the track. Starting from the front row is especially important at this track because it’s so tight, especially the first section. All in all, it was a good session. We improved the chassis set-up so the bike is giving me a better feeling. We have met the first target of starting from the front row, so I am quite confident for tomorrow, but we still need to make some more adjustments to further improve our race pace. Once again the big question is the weather, the forecast still says there’s a chance of rain tomorrow, so we will have to see what happens.”
Nicky Hayden, eighth fastest, 1m 21.876s
“This morning we made a bit of an improvement and I was able to improve my lap time even though the track wasn’t so good, so I was quite excited, I thought we had a good chance in qualifying. At the start of qualifying I was going decent on some pretty used tyres that by the end had race distance on them, so I felt pretty good. But the qualifiers didn’t go as we wanted. We had an issue with a front wheel sensor when I went out on my third qualifier, so we had to come in and change the sensor, which lost us some time and some rhythm. Basically we didn’t get it done. On qualifiers my T1 and T2 times were really good but T3 and T4 weren’t so good. It seems like maybe we were a little soft on the front suspension or we’ve improved the rear so much that maybe it’s overworking the front tyre. Looking at tomorrow, I’ve gotten some good starts this year, we’re right in the middle of the third row, so I’m sure there’s going to be plenty of drama, plenty of action. I feel like we’ve got a decent pace, so the race should be okay.”
Kazuhiko Yamano - Team Manager
“Dani did a good job today, second is a good result here. It’s important to get a good start because overtaking isn’t easy at this track. His target is still victory. Nicky’s race pace was good but he was a little unlucky on his final attack this afternoon, so he will need a good start from the third row. His pace on race tyres is quite good, so I think it is still possible for him to target the podium.”
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