Dani Pedrosa and Casey Stoner both feel there is room for improvement with their Repsol Honda RC213V despite finishing first and second in Friday Practice at the Sachsenring. Pedrosa was quickest in both sessions but the afternoon rain prevented him from running the soft tyre, which he still doesn't feel totally comfortable on.
“The weekend has started pretty good for us; I felt comfortable in both the dry and wet conditions, but we only managed half of our plan today. We wanted to test the hard rear tyres in the afternoon, because in theory the hardest compound should be working better in this track where you are leaning to the left a long time, and with the soft the bike slides a lot. Anyway, it’s been also good to try the bike in the wet for one practice session because it looks like the weather will again be very unstable. Today I’ve been using the new chassis we received in Assen and the feeling was ok, but weather permitting, I would like to compare both chassis again tomorrow before qualifying. We’ve had a good start, but we cannot relax; the times are very close here, as usual, and we still have margin to improve”.
Stoner was much happier with his pace in the dry than in the wet but the perennial problem of chatter returned and that concerns the championship co-leader ahead of the race.
“We were pretty happy in both conditions today. In the dry we felt comfortable and we had a consistently higher pace than the others and we’re confident we can go quite a bit faster so that was definitely a positive. We were struggling a little at the beginning in the wet, we needed to find more rear traction but the conditions weren’t perfect as they were changing throughout the session with some parts of the track drying out and then more rain arriving. It was difficult to get a consistent feeling for the track but we were close to the front and fairly happy. Unfortunately we have some bad chatter in the rear, especially on the right hand corners, both in the wet and dry so we need to improve this before the race”.
