Front-end chatter holds back KONICA MINOLTA Honda Team at
Brno
Shinya Nakano suffered more of the front-end chatter that’s
been afflicting his Honda RC212V all season during today’s
22-lap race at the Brno circuit in the Czech Republic. Despite
a good start the 29-year-old Japanese rider found that the
vibrations caused by the ‘chatter’ from the front-end
of his 800cc Honda effectively limited his cornering speed
at the 3.2-mile circuit, which relies upon speed through the
corners for a good result. Despite the problems, Nakano managed
to take more points for 14th place and the Team are still
upbeat about the potential for the updated RCV212V. Tomorrow
they stay on at the Brno circuit for vital development work
on the bike, before the final six races of the season.
Gianluca Montiron – Team Manager KONICA MINOLTA
Honda
“With an updated machine for the race our expectations
for today were a little different, but tomorrow the Team will
test the technical situation and try and eradicate this chattering
problem. We need to understand if it’s a tyre issue
or our machine settings. We will test and hopefully find some
positive answer, as Shinya was unable to push hard today and
this is the limiting factor. This has been our problem all
season, but tomorrow we will work on this new bike and try
our best to make some big improvements. It was positive for
us that both the factory machines with Nicky Hayden and Dani
Pedrosa were competitive which is good for all Honda machines
in the future. Monday may not give us any points for the championship
but it does give us vital information for the final third
of the season.”
Shinya Nakano – Rider, KONICA MINOLTA Honda
(14th position)
“All weekend we’ve had front-end chattering issues.
We tried to fix this problem in warm-up this morning by trying
a harder front tyre and we had a little less chattering but
after few laps the problem returned and this meant that in
the race we couldn’t push hard. It’s clear to
us that the engine is smoother and has more potential, but
with this turning problem we cannot use this potential. Tomorrow
is a very important test for us to solve the problem of chatter
and therefore find better turning ability and corner speed
for the last part of the season when we really need to be
getting improved results.”
Giulio Bernardelle – Technical Director, KONICA
MINOLTA Honda
“Despite a good start it was not possible for Shinya
to fight with the riders ahead of him. This was because it
was not possible to solve the chatter problem from the front-end
of the machine and that meant that Shinya couldn’t be
fast in the corners: especially those turns between T2 T3.
Brno is very much a corner speed track and this hurt his lap-times
so he fell back from the group ahead. We tested two different
construction front tyres this morning, but the chattering
problem was almost the same so it was not possible to do anything
different. We know the potential of the updated RC212V is
better than the standard machine, so we are lucky that we
are here to test tomorrow at Brno so we will see if the chatter
is a characteristic of the circuit or of the machine and therefore
one we need to work on. We will also be testing some different
Michelin tyres to see if they will help. Tomorrow’s
test is very important, as from this test we will plan the
last third of the season where good results are so very important
to us.”
Czech Republic GP - Race results
1) Casey Stoner Ducati 43’ 45.810”
2) John Hopkins Suzuki 43’ 53.713”
3) Nicky Hayden Honda 43’ 58.910”
4) Dani Pedrosa Yamaha 44’ 01.610”
5) Chris Vermeulen Suzuki 44’ 03.113”
14) Shinya Nakano Honda 44’ 42.879”
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