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 MotoGPHONDA RC212 - 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.”
