KONICA MINOLTA Honda 12th for Japanese Grand Prix
KONICA MINOLTA Honda rider Shinya Nakano shaved almost a
second-and-a-half from his Friday lap-time in today’s
qualifying session for the Japanese Grand Prix. The former
250cc GP championship runner-up improved the set-up of his
Honda RC212V around the 2.98mile Twin Ring Motegi circuit,
but will make some further changes to the front-end of his
800cc machine in time for tomorrow’s 24-lap race. Weather
conditions continue to be hot, although it is expected to
be a little cooler in time for tomorrow’s race.
Gianluca Montiron – Team Manager KONICA MINOLTA
Honda
“I thing that today was a very exciting qualifying session
and I’m happy that Honda show they have the power here
at their home track with Dani Pedrosa on pole position and
Nicky Hayden in third. It’s also good to see Michelin
take the top three positions. Shinya was quite good today
and he made some progress but we needed to make a bigger step
forward to move up the grid for the race. I think he had a
lot of pressure today, as he wanted to have a good qualifying
session at this, his home grand prix. I think perhaps he didn’t
use his last qualifying tyre as well as he could have. He
was behind Valentino Rossi and had posted the fastest first
sector of the lap, he lost a little time in T2 and then made
a mistake in T3 and lost some more time. Tomorrow will be
a different story and I think we have to use warm-up to refine
the settings that Shinya can use for the race, as we search
for improved consistency.”
Shinya Nakano – Rider, KONICA MINOLTA Honda
(47 laps – 1’ 47.295”)
“It’s been tough today as the lap time around
here has improved a lot! On the qualifying tyre I was making
a good lap time in T1 and T2 sectors, but in T3 and the downhill
T4 sector we’ve been having problems with braking stability.
This makes it hard to enter the corner at high-speed and affects
your overall lap-time. Tomorrow we will change some settings
to the front of the bike to improve our braking performance.
We need to make a good start as at Motegi it’s very
hard to pass around here.”
Giulio Bernardelle – Technical Director, KONICA
MINOLTA Honda
“This morning we saw that some Michelin riders were
able to run consistent 1’47s lap-times, that was a surprise
for us as we didn’t expect to see these kind of lap
times! We will see tomorrow if they were using a soft tyre
or if they really can do it in the race. We can run in the
48s consistently and I think this is our potential for the
race. We’ve improved a lot these last two days, but
Shinya is still not confident under braking after the main
straight. In T4 alone we’re losing a few tenths on both
qualifying and race tyres. We will test some adjustments tomorrow
on the front forks to improve this and hope to find a solution.
Braking stability is so important here, as in that sector
after hitting the brakes it’s the slow-speed sector
of the track, where it’s important to enter this section
as fast as you can to get a good lap time. That part of the
track is also a good point to overtake, so making this improvement
in warm-up tomorrow could be key to our having a good race
here.”
GP of Japan - Qualifying practice classification
1) Dani Pedrosa Honda 1’ 45.864”
2) Valentino Rossi Yamaha 1’ 46.255”
3) Nicky Hayden Honda 1’ 46.575”
4) Randy de Puniet Kawasaki 1’ 46.643”
5) Toni Elias Honda 1’ 46.804”
12) Shinya Nakano Honda 1’ 47.295”
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