Assen beckons for KONICA MINOLTA Honda and Shinya Nakano
Shinya Nakano returns to the scene of his best-ever MotoGP
result when he races at Assen in The Netherlands this weekend.
Last year, the 29-year-old secured second place in an action-packed
race and he and his KONICA MINOLTA Honda Team hope that they
can also snatch a good result at the Dutch TT. Tyre partner
Michelin also has an excellent record at the track as the
French tyre giant has never been beaten at the Dutch circuit
since 1991.
With just days between the British and Dutch GPs the Team
packed-up immediately after the Donington Park race yesterday
and headed across the North Sea to mainland Europe and Holland.
This will be the second race at the newly-configured 2.8mile
Assen circuit. The month of June has been a frantic one for
the MotoGP paddock with the Dutch GP being the fourth race
in as many weeks. After Assen there’s a two-week break
before the German Grand Prix at the Sachsenring on 15th July.
Gianluca Montiron – Team Manager KONICA MINOLTA
Honda
“The Circuit Van Drenthe has long been known as ‘The
Cathedral’ of motorcycle racing and it is always exciting
to go there to race, even if the track has recently changed
so much. Once more I think we will see the weather force us
to make some changes, depending on whether it’s wet
or dry. Whatever the conditions are, I think we have to quickly
find and improve our set-up from the Thursday practices to
help Shinya feel more comfortable with the new RC212V machine
so that he can get into a good rhythm with the bike earlier
in the weekend. This will help us, meaning that we will not
have to bridge such a big gap during the final qualifying
hour.”
Shinya Nakano – Rider, KONICA MINOLTA Honda
“I think I’m probably one of the few riders who
actually prefers the ‘new’ Assen circuit to the
old one. I am sure it does have something to do with qualifying
well in second position last year and then taking second place
in the race! Obviously this will be the first time I’m
riding at Assen with the new 800cc Honda MotoGP bike and the
first time on Michelin tyres, but I think the track itself
now really suits my style, so I’m hoping that we can
get a good result. We think that the weather conditions will
be similar to Donington, so we shouldn’t have too many
surprises from last weekend.”
Giulio Bernardelle – Technical Director, KONICA
MINOLTA Honda
“Assen has changed a lot recently and this will be the
first race there with the new RC212V 800cc MotoGP machine
Because of the big changes it’s not so much of an old-style
‘road’ circuit anymore, but is more like one of
the more modern tracks, but it’s still challenging in
its own way. The very changeable weather conditions and temperatures
we experienced last weekend at Donington will, I think, be
similar to what we can expect at Assen. With the Dutch TT
being less than one week after the British Grand Prix, we
will not have any time for any major changes to our technical
package, but Michelin has been working hard for us since the
start of the season and recently we’ve found some improvements,
particularly from the front tyres, so we will be testing some
of these at Assen and hoping that they will help us find an
improved machine set-up.”
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