Repsol Honda riders Dani Pedrosa and Nicky Hayden put in another day’s good work at sunny Estoril yesterday, testing Michelin tyres, fine-tuning machine setup and evaluating new chassis parts.
The main focus of the post-Portuguese Grand Prix session was tyre testing, both riders trying a variety of different compounds.
Joint World Championship leader Pedrosa used qualifying tyres to clock the fastest lap of the day while Hayden preferred to con centrate on riding in race trim with race tyres, recording the fastest lap of the day on race tyres and improving on his best lap during Sunday’s race.
The day also gave the RC212V riders the chance to experiment with different settings options, with a view to the upcoming Chinese Grand Prix, and evaluate new chassis parts which offered promising performance.
The Chinese GP, round four of the 18-race 2008 MotoGP series, takes place at Shanghai on May 2/3/4.
Dani Pedrosa, fastest lap: 1m 36.455s ( 68 laps)
“It’s been another positive day of testing. We focused mostly on testing tyres with Michelin, both race tyres and qualifying t yres, because I needed to improve my performance on qualifiers. The day’s work has helped us prepare for the Chinese GP and further improve our base setup. We also did some work on the chassis and suspension to improve front-end feeling during hard braking, because this aspect of performance is particularly important at Shanghai, and we also worked on the electronics.”
Nicky Hayden, fastest lap: 1m 36.928s (111 laps)
“Everything went pretty smooth yesterday. We worked mainly on improving the race setup to get the bike m ore stable on the brakes, because there’s a lot of hard braking at Shanghai. We improved our race pace here, I think we were fastest on race tyres yesterday, so we’re happy about that. In the afternoon we did some tyre testing with Michelin and that went pretty well. I'm feeling confident, the bike is working well and my team have done a great job here, doing a day-and-night shift to give me a good bike after I bent my race bike on Sunday, so a big thank you to them. I’m looking forward to China and getting a positive result.”
Lap Times:
1. Dani Pedrosa (Repsol Honda) 1’36.455
2. Valentino Rossi (Fiat Yamaha) 1’36.707
3. An drea Dovizioso (Jir Scot team) 1’36.791
4. Nicky Hayden (Repsol Honda) 1’36.928
5. Colin Edwards (Yamaha Tech 3) 1’37.145
6. Randy De Puniet (Lcr Honda) 1’37.146
7. Casey Stoner (Ducati Marlboro) 1’37.330
8. Chris Vermeulen (Rizla Suzuki) 1’37.617
9. Shinya Nakano (San Carlo Honda) 1’37.725
10. James Toseland (Yamaha Tech 3) 1’37.767
11. Loris Capirossi (Rizla Suzuki) 1’37.781
12. Alex De Angelis (San Carlo Honda) 1’37.782
13. John Hopkins (Kawasaki) 1’38.023
14. Toni Elias (Alice team) 1’38.695
15. Anthony West (Kawasaki) 1’39.695
16. Sylvain Giuntoli (Alice Team) 1’39.223
17. Marco Meandri (Marlboro Ducati) 1’39.725
