The Repsol Honda Team finished the second day of practice at Losail circuit with Casey Stoner in third position and Dani Pedrosa fifth.
The Australian World Champion set the fastest time in FP2 and was leading in FP3 until others put on a new soft rear to take the fastest time of the day. Casey improved his lap time by 0.3s in the evening even though he remained on hard tyres until the end.
Dani Pedrosa crashed in FP2, without sustaining any injury, and was only able to use one bike in the second session of the evening, whilst his mechanics worked hard to build up the damaged machine. Nevertheless, Dani also improved his lap time by half a second from one session to the other.
The Repsol Honda riders return on track tomorrow night for the first qualifying session of the season, which will decide the starting grid for the Grand Prix of Qatar.
Casey Stoner:
“Today has been pretty good for us in general, we has some issues in the first two sessions but we've fixed them slightly in last one which is definitely positive. We've been able to turn down the electronics a lot more and now I have more feeling and connection with the rear tyre which gave me a lot more confidence. This allowed me to do some good lap times with some pretty old tyres. A few people got in our way throughout the session so we were unable to show what we were really capable of, but we know how we feel and we're confident for qualifying tomorrow.”
Dani Pedrosa:
“The day wasn't as good for us as we would have liked. I had some problems with the electronics and I couldn't ride at 100%, especially in the exits of the corners where we have more issues. Let's hope the mechanics can find a solution and we can have a good qualifying session tomorrow. The crash in the first session was totally unexpected; it was on my first lap of the second exit and I was not pushing at all. But I escaped unhurt and it's ok.”
Repsol Honda press release
