Repsol Honda riders Dani Pedrosa and Casey Stoner feel they are no nearer to knowing how competitive they will be in this weekend's Spanish Grand Prix after Friday was heavily disrupted by rain. Pedrosa was fastest of all in the second session and although he felt happy with the feeling from his RC213V, he's mindful that conditions may be different in qualifying.
“It has been a strange day due to the weather conditions. In the morning we decided to not go out because the track was not wet enough then we had more or less the same conditions in the afternoon, but it was necessary to do some laps and get some rhythm. The first feeling on the bike was good for me, the bike felt good and I’m riding well but I hope we have better weather tomorrow, full dry or full wet. Anyway, it is important for us to do a good qualifying practice tomorrow and we will need to be clever and quick because the conditions can easily change and in one minute can be the option to make the lap time for the pole and one minute later can be a disaster. So let’s keep focused and try to do a good job”.
Stoner was fourth but agreed with his teammate that the times weren't particularly representative. The World Champion also bemoaned the conditions for preventing him from discovering his state of fitness, after his Qatar GP was affected by arm pump.
“It’s been a strange day, but at least we managed a few laps to get some sort of feeling in wet conditions. We came back in to try and change the bike to give more rear grip but by the time we went back out it was already starting to dry a little and the conditions were constantly changing and we couldn’t really get a good understanding of the bike. Towards the end we were fast compared to everyone else but it didn’t really matter by then. It’s just been one of those days, not a lot to be taken from it, we know we have some things to improve if it continues to be wet, hopefully we can get some good track time tomorrow morning before qualifying in the afternoon. At the moment my arm feels ok, but it’s difficult to know when the conditions are like this as you’re not stressing it like in the dry”.