Good weather finally arrives for KONICA MINOLTA Honda at
Misano
The KONICA MINOLTA Honda Team finally saw the sun shine today
in time for the extended practice session and the qualifying
hour for tomorrow’s San Marino Grand Prix. Team rider
Shinya Nakano spent the extended morning session acquainting
himself with the 2.6mile circuit in sunnier conditions, making
important changes to the set-up of his Honda RC212V before
tomorrow’s 28-lap race. Tomorrow’s San Marino
and Riviera di Rimini Grand Prix is the 13th round of the
18-round 2007 MotoGP championship.
Gianluca Montiron – Team Manager KONICA MINOLTA
Honda
“Today we have found that Shinya has not enough grip
in some areas and is lacking traction in some corners. We
think this is maybe due to the weather conditions we have
experienced at Misano and I think things will improve tomorrow
as the grip level increases and more rubber is laid down on
the track. For Shinya it has been necessary to learn the characteristics
of our updated machine, but he improved this afternoon and
I hope that we can improve again in the warm-up. We have to
approach the race and be aggressive, but I think we are in
a better shape for this Grand Prix than at Brno, because we
are still learning the characteristics of the track. As always
the first corner of the race tomorrow will be important to
determine if Shinya can overtake other riders and then get
into a good rhythm.”
Shinya Nakano – Rider, KONICA MINOLTA Honda
(76 laps – 1’ 35.389”)
“Today was much drier! Yesterday we had such terrible
weather, so thankfully the conditions were much better today.
This morning our problem was that we couldn’t get a
good feeling from the bike. Maybe it was due to the track
conditions and also the settings. We improved a little bit
this afternoon, but we are still looking for more braking
stability and rear traction overall. Having had some time
on the track, I enjoy it a lot, but it’s harder to learn
than some tracks, thanks to the combination of low and high-speed
corners. We may try a different front setting tomorrow to
get more confidence under braking. I will need a good start
tomorrow as at Misano it’s not easy to overtake as it
is a high-speed but narrow track.”
Giulio Bernardelle – Technical Director, KONICA
MINOLTA Honda
“Thanks to the storm, it was possible only to make a
few laps in the wet conditions yesterday morning. This was
pretty much for nothing as it wasn’t enough time even
for Shinya to really get to know the track. Thankfully it
was sunny this morning but the temperature was not so high
and for this reason we used a softer tyre and spent time working
on our machine setting. It was a long, hard practice as we
had two hours to work on the RC212V. We had to make a lot
of changes, and finally things were coming better. This afternoon
the temperature was higher so we could use a race tyre and
we improved by more than two seconds. Misano is a narrow track
and in some areas it’s not so easy to find the best
line through the corners. To help we made some transmission
changes to see what effect they had on the three consecutive
corners in the third sector of the lap. We are still around
0.5 to 0.6 away from a mid-lap time, but we hope that tomorrow
morning we can make small adjustments so we can get into the
top ten. We will also be choosing our race tyre after seeing
what the conditions are likely to be.”
San Marino GP - Qualifying practice classification
1) Casey Stoner Ducati 1’ 33.918”
2) Valentino Rossi Yamaha 1’ 34.094”
3) Nicky Hayden Honda 1’ 34.469”
4) Randy de Puniet Kawasaki 1’ 34.506”
5) John Hopkins Suzuki 1’ 34.536”
14) Shinya Nakano Honda 1’ 35.389”
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