MotoGP 2008 - Round Four - Shanghai (China)

MotoGP 2008 - Round Four - Shanghai (China) - Day 2 - HRC Report

The Repsol Honda Team rider is fifth after the timed session, while teammate Nicky Hayden is tenth. Julián Simón, fourth, will start tomorrow on the front row

In spite of the weather forecast which had predicted rain, the sun shone again today on the Shanghai Circuit and the bad weather held back. However, the forecast for tomorrow is not too promising, and the teams are worried about not having trained in wet conditions, in order to know the precise setup to use if it does actually rain tomorrow.

In MotoGP, the third free morning training sessions followed the same pattern as the two held yesterday, with Rossi, Pedrosa and Stoner switching the lead of the classification. Rossi was the fastest at the end of the morning session, followed by Dani Pedrosa and Australian rider Stoner. In the afternoon, in the definitive timed session, Pedrosa was again one of the fastest of the top category, lap after lap setting a pace which puts him among the favourites, along with Stoner and Rossi, to win the victory tomorrow. However, during the last half hour of the training sessions, when the qualifying tyres came into action, things started to go wrong for the two Repsol Honda Team riders. While Nicky Hayden took second position with his first qualifying tyre, Dani Pedrosa's rear tyre skidded hard, and though he avoided a fall, he lost a lot of time. The first failed attempt by the Spanish rider.

But things were to get worse for American Repsol Honda Team rider Hayden, who during his second attempt and when he was riding a pole position time, suffered a light fall when the front tyre of his Honda RC212V lost adherence. That was it for Hayden, who thus lost his options of fighting for pole position. In his third and last attempt with his spare bike after a quick run to boxes, Hayden was very far from the fastest time set by Edwards, and had to make do with a tenth fastest register, a result which puts him back down on the fourth row of the starting grid.

Teammate Dani Pedrosa, back on the track with his second qualifying tyre, ran the third fastest time. While he did a pitstop to fit his third qualifying tyre, Pedrosa fell to ninth position, overtaken by a number of riders who were running their fastest lap. Back on the track, the winner of the last Spanish Grand Prix ran the fifth fastest time, securing himself a place on the second row of tomorrow's starting grid. The fourth and last qualifying tyre only helped the Repsol Honda Team rider to maintain his final fifth position.

Quotes
MotoGP
Dani Pedrosa >> 5th fastest, 1m 58.855s

“We improved from the morning to the afternoon session. We were lapping at a good pace on race tyres but unfortunately we couldn't improve as much as we usually do with qualifying tyres, it seemed like we lacked a bit of grip. I don’t know why, but a lot of riders crashed during this afternoon’s qualifying session.

"All things considered, starting from the second row tomorrow is not so bad. If it’s dry we will have to improve a little bit more our rhythm but I hope we will be able to have a dry race because according to the latest weather forecasts it may rain tomorrow. In that case we will only have 20 minutes to prepare the setting for the wet.”

Nicky Hayden >> 10th fastest, 1m 59.507s
“Qualifying didn’t go to plan, really. It was okay in the beginning, we were quite up front on race tyres. With my first qualifier I went to first place for a second, then with my second qualifier I just had an easy front push in turn 11 and down I went. I had a pretty good lap going but just didn’t get it down.

"The track is so long and so big it took me forever to get back to the pits, a little bit walking, a little bit scooter. Then I just got out on the other bike and did one run and didn’t get the chance to improve my time. It was a pity because things were looking quite good on race tyres – this morning I did over race distance and was quite happy. This afternoon the track felt a bit greasy, there were a lot of guys crashing. I’ve put myself in a nice hole starting tenth, I haven’t qualified off the front two rows in the dry since Barcelona last year. I’m going to need an awesome start, try to pick a few guys off and move forward.”