KONICA MINOLTA Honda makes a cautious start at Laguna Seca
Shinya Nakano and his KONICA MINOLTA Honda made a cautious
start in today’s first practice session for Sunday’s
US MotoGP race. Lower temperatures than expected along with
windy conditions and alternating grip levels meant that the
29-year-old Japanese rider is looking for improvements in
time for tomorrow’s hour-long qualifying session around
the challenging 2.24 mile-long Laguna Seca circuit. Tomorrow
the KONICA MINOLTA Honda Team will make further changes to
the suspension and gearing set-up of their Honda RC212V MotoGP
machine to give Shinya the best technical package so the former
250cc World Championship runner-up can be further up the order
in time for Sunday’s race.
Gianluca Montiron – Team Manager KONICA MINOLTA
Honda
“Today’s result is not so impressive, but we will
improve tomorrow. During the first practice session our situation
was better, but this afternoon as others improved we weren’t
able to move forward as much. At the moment we have the standard
Honda machine while our competitors move forward and receive
something new. We were perhaps a little too conservative with
our approach in practice today, so the Team as a whole has
to help Shinya get his rhythm and achieve his best lap time
a little more quickly. The temperature is the same for everybody
so this is something we simply have to deal with. I think
tomorrow it’s not just about the qualifying session
but also to give Shinya the best machine possible for the
race: this is the most important point. Tomorrow we will dedicate
at least last half an hour to help Shinya make the best lap
time and today we know that some of our competitors tested
some soft tyres, hence they made a better lap time than us.”
Shinya Nakano – Rider, KONICA MINOLTA Honda
(60 laps – 1’ 24.850”)
“I’m so disappointed with the overall result today
but not so worried when I think that today is essentially
set-up day and I think perhaps in the afternoon we went in
a bit of a wrong direction with settings so we couldn’t
improve so much. The track this year is a bit better that
last year and a little less bumpy, but conditions are still
so-so: it’s quite windy and the track is dirty in places
so grip levels are different. Of course, it’s the same
for us all. I think tomorrow should still be OK. We need to
find some gearbox settings tomorrow to improve things, so
that is one of the things we shall be working on.”
Giulio Bernardelle – Technical Director, KONICA
MINOLTA Honda
“The overall temperatures are much colder than expected.
The sun is shining but there’s a lot of wind, which
means the overall temperature is so low, much lower than Germany
and much lower than we experienced here last year. We were
expecting to have higher temperatures and some sectors seem
to have different track temperatures. All our competitors
have to deal with the same problem, but basically we have
to find more grip on both the front and rear of the bike.
We are playing with gearbox settings as well at the moment
to find the optimum for this track. This afternoon we changed
2nd and 3rd gears so we will discuss with Shinya what is the
best solution.”
USA GP – Free practice classification
1) Casey Stoner Ducati 1’ 22.997”
2) Marco Melandri Honda 1’ 23.177”
3) John Hopkins Suzuki 1’ 23.452”
4) Colin Edwards Yamaha 1’ 23.535”
5) Dani Pedrosa Honda 1’ 23.548”
18) Shinya Nakano Honda 1’ 24.850”
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