Repsol HRC

REPSOL HONDA TEAM BEGINS 2007’s FINAL ASSAULT

Repsol Honda riders Dani Pedrosa and Nicky Hayden finished in third and ninth positions at the Ricardo Tormo circuit today as the first day of practice took place ahead of Sunday’s Grand Prix of Valencia. Riding at the third event of the year on home soil, Pedrosa was quick in both sessions as he honed the settings of his RC212V for this tight and challenging track. The 22-year-old Spaniard finished the afternoon hour just 0.182s from pace-setter Casey Stoner having recorded a promising series of laps in the low 1m 33s bracket. Pedrosa was also fastest through the speed trap in the afternoon session.

Hayden set a time exactly 0.5s behind his team-mate this afternoon on a day when the top 12 riders were covered by a single second. This placed Hayden in ninth, a position the 26-year-old American was not entirely satisfied with having struggled to find enough grip in the cool conditions at the 4.005km (2.478-mile) circuit. With more Michelin tyre options to evaluate when practice continues tomorrow morning Hayden will look to climb the timesheets ahead of the afternoon’s qualifying session.

Dani Pedrosa – Combined Free Practice : 3rd – 1m 33.150s
“Today was a solid start to the weekend and my fastest lap time was pretty good. I was able to run at a reasonably consistent pace in both sessions and when the temperature rose for the afternoon my lap time came down quite a lot. Nonetheless, we still have a few issues to solve with settings and tyre choice if we’re to be truly competitive – we need to find a little bit extra. The gap to the front is not big but everybody’s times are very close and a small gap counts for quite a lot at this circuit. Obviously this is an important race for me and for the team. It’s the last race of the year and our last chance to get a good result. Plus it’s a home race for me which adds an extra incentive. We want to win here so we’ve got to continue moving forward to make that possible.”

Nicky Hayden – Combined Free Practice : 9th – 1m 33.650s
“Honestly it’s not the start to the weekend we wanted and we’d have liked to have come out of the gate a lot stronger. On the cooler track we’re having a hard time getting the tyres to work as I would like. However, we’ve made a bit of progress today and I definitely hope that tomorrow I can do a lot better personally, and that we can also make some changes to get the bike to work the tyres more effectively. We don’t seem to have the grip that I need at the moment so we’ll see what other options Michelin has available and work on the settings too. There’s still a long way to go this weekend and the two hours of practice tomorrow will be crucial. Qualifying is going to be really important too so we’ll be looking to come out a lot stronger tomorrow.”

Makoto Tanaka - Team Manager
“It was cold for the morning session and the ground temperature was quite low which affected the grip quite a lot. With the sunshine in the afternoon the temperature rose significantly and the grip improved – but still we have some work to do to improve the settings for both riders. I hope for warmer temperatures over the weekend because I think our package is not favoured by the cooler conditions. Still, we didn’t use all the tyre options available to us from Michelin so we have the potential to improve things further.” 

Konica Minolta Honda

Shinya Nakano and the KONICA MINOLTA Honda Team made steady progress during the first practice session for this weekend’s final MotoGP race of the year. Shinya and the Team were struggling a little with the lower than expected temperatures at the 2.764-mile circuit. The Team altered the weight balance of their Honda RC212V machine to try and give 30-year-old Nakano more feeling from the front-end of the bike in Valencia’s challenging tight turns. Tomorrow it is expected that temperatures will be higher – more like the normal conditions at the Ricardo Tormo circuit for the time of year – which should lead to more grip from the circuit and improved laptimes. Once more the times were close amongst the MotoGP riders with just one second covering the top 13 riders.

Gianluca Montiron – Team Manager KONICA MINOLTA Honda
“I think it’s clear today that we have to find the perfect set-up for Shinya, as at the moment he is not able to ride the bike in a comfortable way. We also have a little bit of chattering and also need to finalise our tyre choice for the race. I expect that we will make a big improvement tomorrow, as I know that Shinya with qualifying tyres will be much faster than today with a race tyres! We can see once more that Valencia is a circuit that promotes close racing as the gap between each rider today was very small.”

Shinya Nakano – Rider, KONICA MINOLTA Honda (56 laps – 1’ 34.352”)
“Yet again we’ve had some low temperatures during the first day of practice, although this afternoon conditions were a little better. We tried four different tyres today – one or two were not so bad even if overall our position is not so good in 16th. That shows just how close it is again. The positive point is that I didn’t have any big problems today. I tried to follow some of the other guys and see where I was losing time and I could see it was on the exit of the turns. Tomorrow we will make some alterations to improve our rear-end grip as this is important at such a technical track where you need to get out of the turns well to get into the next corner. I enjoy this place, I look back and have some good memories from Valencia – especially in the 250 class – so tomorrow I want to be much higher up.”

Giulio Bernardelle – Technical Director, KONICA MINOLTA Honda
“So we start our last Grand Prix of 2007. Basically today it was quite a similar situation to the last two or three MotoGP races, where we have found the temperatures quite low – much lower than normal here in Valencia for this time of year. Today the temperature on the ground was just 14 degrees. I think this has led us to suffer a little from a lack of grip and particularly the front feeling of the machine, which Shinya says is not so good. Today we tested some tyres and I think we understood which was the best direction to move in. In the afternoon we changed a lot of settings, including moving some weight to the front. This made the situation better, even if the lap time didn’t improve so much. The important point is that Shinya is feeling better with the bike now and we’re expecting higher temperatures tomorrow.”

GP de la Comunitat Valenciana - Free practice classification
1) Casey Stoner Ducati 1’ 32.968”
2) Sylvain Guintoli Yamaha 1’ 33.084”
3) Dani Pedrosa Honda 1’ 33.150”
4) Marco Melandri Honda 1’ 33.319”
5) Chris Vermeulen Suzuki 1’ 33.501”
16) Shinya Nakano Honda 1’ 34.352”

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