2006 Australian Superbike Championship (YMF Loan) - Round Four - Queensland Raceway

Repsol Honda Day 1 Report

Round 12 of the 2006 MotoGP World Championship began today with the first day of free practice for the Grand Prix of the Czech Republic at the splendid Brno circuit. The Repsol Honda Team, fresh from a short summer break after their one-two finish at the last round in Laguna Seca, was quickly up to speed again in the morning session with Nicky Hayden and Dani Pedrosa finishing in 1st and 5th places.

The second session proved a little trickier as slightly warmer temperatures altered the conditions of the track and Hayden was unable to improve his time from the morning, though the 25-year-old American remains confident of making steps tomorrow. Hayden arrived at Brno with a 34-point lead in the riders’ World Championship after taking his second victory of the year in his home race at the U.S. Grand Prix last month.

Dani Pedrosa, in his debut MotoGP season, made short work of learning another new circuit on the bigger machine. His time of 1m 59.675s in the morning session was just 0.288s behind Hayden at the top of the timesheets. The 20-year-old Spaniard, who holds second place in the world championship, improved his time to 1m 59.258s in the afternoon, though slipped to 8th overall.

The Repsol Honda pair will be looking for further improvements from tomorrow’s morning session at the undulating 5.403km (3.357 miles) circuit, ahead of the qualifying shoot-out which begins at 2pm.

Nicky Hayden 10th – 1m 59.387s
“It was nice to get back on track this morning and it feels really good to be working with my boys again. I love being back here, working hard with my guys and everything felt pretty good in this morning’s session. This afternoon, though, I didn’t have such a good feeling. The track temperature changed a bit and we were trying a few different things on the bike, but even when we put the bike back to exactly how I had it this morning my feeling wasn’t so good and my lap times weren’t an improvement. There are a few parts on the track where I feel like I could be doing better and a few places where I need to get the front to steer a little better and accelerate onto the straights. So I’ll sit down and talk about a few issues with my team tonight and we’ll work it out.”

Dani Pedrosa 8th – 1m 59.258s
“Today we started very well in the morning and made some good progress, although the track is not really at 100 per cent and it’s a little bit dirty. This might be why this afternoon we didn’t improve so much. Tomorrow we’ll continue to improve things to get ready for qualifying and the race. Adapting to riding the MotoGP bike here wasn’t so difficult because it doesn’t feel too different to the 250cc, it’s just a bigger bike. Sure the speed is much higher at the end of the straights, but in the corners the difference is just the size and weight of the bike. Anyway, we’ll see if we can make some improvements for tomorrow and get a good qualifying position.”

Makoto Tanaka - Team Manager
“Nicky went very well in the morning and was fastest, however the grip feeling was not to his liking this afternoon and his final position was not as high as he would have liked. But the afternoon session was a bit mysterious because it seems like some riders used qualifying tyres and this means it’s difficult to read too much into the timesheets. Dani made good progress and made some good steps today to improve his time. We have to speed up, so we’ll be working hard this evening and tomorrow to make this happen.”