Dutch track holds lot of work for Pedrosa

Just four days after getting off their machines in Britain, the Repsol riders are back on the track, this time in Holland, at the legendary circuit of Assen, venue of the 80th Netherlands Grand Prix. The first free practice ended with intensive setup work by Andrea Dovizioso and Dani Pedrosa, who finished fifth and sixth respectively, on a day on which Jorge Lorenzo clocked up the fastest time.

The Repsol riders got off to a discreet start, after completing 26 laps in the case of Andrea Dovizioso – clocking up a best time of 1 minute, 35 seconds and 868 milliseconds -, and 24 for Pedrosa – with a best time of 54 milliseconds slower clocked up in his last lap -. Tomorrow, they must finish fine-tuning the setup of their machines if they want to fight for the win this Saturday. Pedrosa, who focused on the setup of the suspension, started the practice among the top five but in the second half of the session, the Spanish rider was unable to improve his times until the end, when he climbed from tenth to sixth.

Dani Pedrosa, 1’35.992 seg, 24 vueltas, 109 km.
“We’re in sixth place which isn’t actually so bad considering that we initially chose the wrong direction with our suspension settings for this track. Basically our set-up was too soft today and this cost us time – especially in T1 – which meant that our lap times suffered quite a lot. So it’s not the ideal start to the race meeting that we were hoping for, but it looks like the weather is going to be stable for the rest of the weekend so we have time to improve things a lot. We need a good result at this race to put Silverstone behind us and because last year I crashed here. The change to the circuit is good and that corner is now very fast – perhaps 270km/h in fifth gear. I’m confident that tomorrow we can do a better job than today and move forward”.

Source: Repsol Media Service