MotoGP news
Honda confident after qualifying
21 April 2007Repsol Honda riders Dani Pedrosa and Nicky Hayden will start tomorrow's Grand Prix of Turkey from third and sixth positions on the grid after a hard-fought qualifying session today. Pedrosa looked on course to take pole position, having been fastest in the first three split times of his final qualifying lap at the 5.340km (3.316 miles) Istanbul Park circuit. But the 21-year-old Spaniard was held up by another rider, also on a flying lap, and lost crucial tenths of a second in the final few corners.
Despite this, Pedrosa was happy to secure a front row start - a vast improvement on last year's qualifying where he finished 16th in a session held in pouring rain. And prior to the qualifying runs, Pedrosa had set the fastest time of the afternoon session on race tyres - a lap of 1m 54.110s - giving promising signals for tomorrow's race.
World Champion Nicky Hayden qualified in sixth position after an excellent ride on his Michelin qualifying tyres. Having struggled to get a good machine set-up this weekend the 25-year-old American put in one of his typically scintillating qualifying rides to propel him up the order. With a starting position on the second row Hayden and his team will be analysing the data tonight in search of improvements to allow him to fight at the front in tomorrow's 22-lap race.
Dani Pedrosa said: "I think everybody had quite a lot of traffic at the end of the session because there were many riders going for a fast lap, so it wasn't just a problem for me. I slowed up and tried to get some free space for my lap but Hopkins came in front of me and I was with him for the whole lap. Without this I think I could have been a little faster, but I'm on the front row which is the important thing for the start of the race tomorrow. Also, I'm in a much better position than last year when I was right at the back. Hopefully I can make a great start and get away well because the first corner here is very difficult. Our bike set-up is quite good and the Michelin tyres too, so I hope I can have a good
race tomorrow."
Nicky Hayden said: "That's the best I've qualified this year so it's nice to be starting up near the front. It would be good to get one the starts that I had at the last race in Jerez and get stuck in, though my race pace hasn't been as fast as I'd like which means it could be a chore tomorrow. We've made some changes to the bike to improve things and a big thanks goes to the team because they've definitely been working hard this weekend, changing a lot of things and working long hours. And the Michelin qualifier worked well today which helped me. We changed the transmission around on the bike to try to increase the top speed but it didn't really help and we're still giving up a lot at the top end. Still, we'll come here tomorrow and try to make a good start and fight with those guys at the front."
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