Dani Pedrosa blamed chatter during qualifying for his inability to take pole position at Sepang on Saturday. The Repsol Honda rider was beaten by Jorge Lorenzo despite outpacing him in free practice, although Dani isn’t concerned about his race pace.
“It was hard because we had a lot of chattering this afternoon and it was very difficult to get a clean lap as in some areas the bike was chattering too much, even in the straight! Nevertheless, we managed to get on the front row again and the second position is good. The pace is high and after missing FP2 yesterday because of the mixed conditions, this morning we’ve been working hard on the race pace. I just hope that we don’t have this chattering for the race. The weather can play an important role too, so we’ll have to see what happens tomorrow afternoon”.
Teammate Casey Stoner will start fourth but didn’t put his failure to reach the front row down to his recent injury. The world champion felt he had the pace to challenge the riders ahead of him but lost his way with set-up, something that concerns him ahead of the race.
“It’s been a really disappointing weekend, but especially today. We’ve had pace all weekend and the first session looked promising but we’ve had problems with the brakes and some other small issues. Every step we take to try and improve the bike, we make it worse and it’s becoming very frustrating. Our potential is much higher than where we are currently at and now we go into the race without any real direction. Physically I’m not sure how I am going to be as we haven’t been able to complete many laps this weekend, our pace is there and I just hope that we can make some small improvements in tomorrow’s warm up”.
