KONICA MINOLTA Honda completes first practice in China
KONICA MINOLTA Honda struggled to find a perfect set-up to
their Honda RC212V MotoGP machine in today’s practice
session for Sunday’s Chinese Grand Prix. Shinya Nakano
and his Team tried a number of different settings but couldn’t
find a setting that suited him in the morning practice session.
Reverting to a previous combination in the afternoon was an
improvement, but then time was against them to improve further.
Shinya and the Team are confident of an improvement during
qualifying tomorrow for Sunday’s 22-lap race.
Gianluca Montiron – Team Manager KONICA MINOLTA
Honda
“We started with two different settings on the bikes
in a bid to find a solution for Shinya to have the performance
from the machine that he needs and basically we spent both
practice sessions trying to find a base set-up. Perhaps we
made too many changes on both bikes, as Shinya needs clear
feedback from the machine before he can push 100% so it’s
important for us to have clear vision about the direction
we take with the machine now. Tonight we will analyse the
data with the support of HRC and decide which direction we
will move in tomorrow. The weather forecast isn’t good
tomorrow, but if it rains and we don’t get any dry track
time it will be even harder to find our optimum dry set-up.
We have to be positive and I trust in the skill and dedication
of the Team, so whatever happens I’m confident we can
improve our performance in final qualifying.”
Shinya Nakano – Rider, KONICA MINOLTA Honda
(40 laps – 2’ 02.977”)
“We tried hard to find a new setting this morning but
it was not a good way to go and I didn’t have a good
feeling from the front tyre. In the afternoon we went back
to a previous setting and it was an improvement, but thanks
to the time we lost in the morning we couldn’t improve
things from there. Perhaps we changed too many things today,
but now I know the track and I know we can improve in qualifying.
We have two hours tomorrow and a warm-up session on Sunday
before the race and it’s the race that matters. Tomorrow
we’re going to put maximum effort in so we can improve
our position.”
Giulio Bernardelle – Technical Director, KONICA
MINOLTA Honda
“We set up our machine with completely different settings
from before but we’ve not seen any good result at the
end of the day and Shinya prefers the standard setting on
the bike which we used in Istanbul. Tomorrow we will change
the front geometry of the RC212V as Shinya says that the bike
doesn’t turn how he likes in the first part of the corner
and he loses speed and the best line through the turns. It’s
going to be difficult to make all the changes and analyse
them, as time is precious in tomorrow’s two sessions.
Today we also used a new front tyre with a new construction
made by Michelin, but that didn’t help us with the settings
we used today. With the very long straight we could see that
we were not so good on acceleration so we’ve altered
the gearing to improve that, but this also makes the bike
harder to ride for Shinya in certain parts of the track.”
GP of China – Free practice classification
1) John Hopkins Suzuki 2’ 01.204”
2) Marco Melandri Honda 2’ 01.303”
3) Dani Pedrosa Honda 2’ 01.333”
4) Nicky Hayden Honda 2’ 01.346”
5) Loris Capirossi Ducati 2’ 01.365”
19) Shinya Nakano Honda 2’ 02.977”
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