MotoGP 2008 - Round Four - Shanghai (China)

MotoGP 2008 - Round Four - Shanghai (China) - Day 1 - HRC Report

Repsol HRC

Repsol Honda riders Dani Pedrosa and Nicky Hayden made a solid start to this weekend’s Chinese Grand Prix at Shanghai, ending the day’s two practice sessions third and sixth fastest.

In hot and humid conditions the pair both made good progress with their RC212Vs, fine-tuning settings for this unusual circuit which features MotoGP’s fastest straight and its heaviest braking demands, the penultimate corner requiring riders to decelerate from more than 320km/h to just 50km/h. This afternoon Pedrosa’s RC212V was the second fastest motorcycle on that straight at 326.0km/h.

Spaniard Pedrosa, currently joint leader of the 2008 MotoGP World Championship, focused his efforts on his RC212V’s chassis and tyre combination. American Hayden made a big jump forward following this morning’s outing, after which his crew made crucial changes to rear-suspension set-up and other detail settings, allowing him to cut an impressive eight tenths of a second from his first session pace.
Dani Pedrosa, third fastest, 2m 00.361s

“Today’s two sessions were quite good for the first day, but we still need to improve our overall package here. During both sessions we concentrated mostly on chassis set-up and tyre choice, working to improve overall performance. My pace was faster this afternoon but not quite what we had expected, so we need to keep on working. Tomorrow we will aim to make another step forward, we will try to find a couple of tenths by making some more detail chassis adjustments and by working closely with the Michelin technicians to find the best tyres. I’m feeling confident for Saturday”.

Nicky Hayden, sixth fastest, 2m 00.607s
“This afternoon was quite a lot better than this morning. Even though our position isn’t a lot better, our gap to the front has come down a lot. After the morning session we changed the spring and made quite a lot of other small changes. Straight away this afternoon the bike worked a lot better and I enjoyed riding it more. I felt pretty comfortable out there. My team did a good job to make some good improvements, so thanks to them. We definitely found some good direction between FP1 and FP2, so hopefully if we can keep working in that direction we’ll be a lot closer again tomorrow. But we need another big step if we’re to really improve.”

Kazuhiko Yamano - Team Manager
“We started from the base set-up we worked on at Estoril, and today the team focused on suspension settings and tyre choice. This track is very demanding for tyres, so the Michelin technicians are working hard to give us what we need for Sunday’s race. Both Dani and Nicky made good improvements from the morning session to the afternoon session, which makes us confident that we can continue moving forward tomorrow.”

-- JiR Scot --

First day at ‘magnificent’ Shanghai track for Andrea Dovizioso

Summer weather today greeted the JiR Team Scot squad at the Shanghai race circuit for the first day of practice. The big difference in temperature between the morning and afternoon sessions was the crucial point of the working programme for both team and rider. After posting the fourth best time in the morning, Andrea Dovizioso concentrated in the afternoon looking for the best choice of tyres while also adapting to the big difference in temperature. After finding a good setting on the bike with the electronic engine management system, the work went well until the end of the day. Tomorrow will be vitally important to ensure optimum settings of the Honda RC212V and grid position for Sunday’s race.

Cirano Mularoni – Team Manager, JiR Team Scot
“The first day today here at Shanghai we did a good job and the team worked well and fast and we found some correct technical solutions allowing Andrea to dedicate himself to other aspects of performance. Andrea is consistent and this shows that he has got used to the track with the bike and that he’s on the right level to improve. I’m pretty much confident that we can obtain a good result tomorrow and on Sunday. I must give big thanks to all our technical partners who have helped so much today.”

Andrea Dovizioso – Rider, JiR Team Scot MotoGP
HONDA RC212V
Best time: 9th - 2’ 01.027”
“Obviously I’m not so happy that I wasn’t as fast in the afternoon when it was hotter. This is the way, but because my pace is consistent I know we have room to make things even better and go faster still. The main problem of the afternoon session was the big difference of temperature and this made the racetrack much slower. I’m pretty much satisfied on the balance of the bike: we have no problems at all with suspension and also during hard braking I am now entering corners without any chatter. We wanted to try many tyres solution today and we did this to have the big picture of all the possible differences we need thanks to the temperature difference. Tomorrow we will concentrate on the fine-tuning of the package in race configuration.”

Gianni Berti – Technical Co-ordinator, JiR Team Scot
“The first part of day it was important to see where we stood from a technical and mechanical point of view so pretty much the whole afternoon we concentrated by doing lots of work with our Michelin tyres. We soon realised that the big difference in temperature was affecting the whole day’s work and that the increased temperature we experienced later on in the day wasn’t making track conditions any better or faster for us.”