REPSOL HONDA RIDERS FIRED UP IN FRANCE
Repsol French Grand Prix, Le Mans
Qualifying, Saturday May 17 2008
Repsol Honda riders Dani Pedrosa and Nicky Hayden put in
storming performances during this afternoon’s French
qualifying session, Pedrosa taking pole position and Hayden
snatching a second-row start.
Superb Pedrosa came out on top at the end of a thrilling
hour of action, the World Championship leader making crucial
chassis adjustments to outpace his closest rival by just over
one tenth of a second. As ever, the MotoGP pack is tightly
packed with Hayden just six tenths off pole and the fastest
12 riders covered by just 1.076 seconds. Hard-working Hayden
and his crew have focused on improving corner-entry performance
at this tight and complex track. The American moved up to
sixth fastest in qualifying but his crew will make further
changes overnight in an effort to improve his pace in race
trim.
Weather conditions at Le Mans have been very changeable so
far this weekend, with this morning’s third practice
session getting underway on a damp track and this afternoon’s
qualifying outing run in cool and mostly overcast conditions
with the occasional sunny spell. There is still a possibility
of rain tomorrow.
Dani Pedrosa, pole position, 1m 32.647s
“I’m very satisfied with today’s result.
It’s my first pole position of the season and that’s
especially good at this track because it’s very important
to have a good grid position here. Today we made some small
chassis adjustments, fine-tuning the machine. This afternoon
I wasn’t able to get the maximum out of my first two
Michelin qualifying tyres, so we made some more changes to
the chassis settings and that allowed me to make a big step
forward with my third qualifier. I didn’t expect to
get pole with my fourth qualifying tyre but I did, so we’re
very happy. As far as race pace goes, I’m quite satisfied
but there are a lot of strong riders going very fast here
and the lap times are all very close, so I hope we can make
another step forward for tomorrow. The other question mark
is the weather. It’s been very changeable and we still
don’t know what to expect for the race.”
Nicky Hayden, 6th fastest, 1m 33.286s
“It definitely hasn’t been an easy day or an easy
weekend. We haven’t really found a direction even though
we’ve been trying a lot of things. This afternoon I
think we made a bit of progress and got a better feeling as
time went on, so I was able to put one down later on and get
a respectable grid position. But I really need to come up
with something for tomorrow if I don’t want to watch
them guys completely disappear in the race. It’s going
to be hard. Getting into the corners has been the issue, then
when we get the front better we hurt the rear, so it’s
been a constant compromise all weekend. We’ve been making
a little bit bigger changes than we would usually make during
a race weekend but sometimes that has to be done. We’ll
definitely try another little something in warm-up. We’ve
got a lot of work to do tonight, but these boys aren’t
scared of a little hard work.”
Kazuhiko Yamano - Team Manager
“That was a fantastic session. Dani’s pole lap
was amazingly quick and it was great to see Nicky make it
onto the second row. I think we’ve seen some excellent
teamwork here, so my thanks to everyone, including Michelin
who have done a great job for us. Dani has a good race pace,
which is particularly impressive because track conditions
have changed constantly over the past two days. Nicky has
also done really well, coming better step by step since yesterday
morning. He has made many chassis changes and I hope he can
make some further improvements for tomorrow.”
Qualifying Practice 2 - results
1 D. PEDROSA SPA Repsol Honda Team 1'32.647
2 C. EDWARDS USA Tech 3 Yamaha + 0.127
3 C. STONER AUS Ducati Marlboro Team + 0.347
4 V. ROSSI ITA Fiat Yamaha Team + 0.510
5 J. LORENZO SPA Fiat Yamaha Team + 0.622
6 N. HAYDEN USA Repsol Honda Team + 0.639
7 J. TOSELAND GBR Tech 3 Yamaha + 0.749
8 C. VERMEULEN AUS Rizla Suzuki MotoGP + 0.793
9 J. HOPKINS USA Kawasaki Racing Team + 0.981
10 A. DOVIZIOSO ITA JiR Team Scot MotoGP + 1.042
11 L. CAPIROSSI ITA Rizla Suzuki MotoGP + 1.060
12 R. DE PUNIET FRA LCR Honda MotoGP + 1.076
13 S. NAKANO JPN San Carlo Honda Gresini + 1.430
14 T. ELIAS SPA Alice Team + 1.914
15 A. DE ANGELIS RSM San Carlo Honda Gresini + 2.023
16 S. GUINTOLI FRA Alice Team + 2.100
17 M. MELANDRI ITA Ducati Marlboro Team + 2.434
18 A. WEST AUS Kawasaki Racing Team + 2.702
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