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Repsol Honda braced for busy Saturday

Repsol Honda riders Nicky Hayden and Dani Pedrosa took to the new-layout Misano in the morning and spent the hour learning the circuit. The wet conditions made times largely irrelevant and prevented any significant machine set-up work or tyre selection ahead of Sunday's 28-lap race. Because of this, in order to allow teams to make up for lost time at a circuit for which they have no previous set-up data, Saturday morning's practice session has been extended to two hours running from 9am - 11am. This will be followed by the one-hour qualifying session in the afternoon. Thankfully the weather is forecast to improve for the rest of the weekend.

Nicky Hayden commented, "Well that's going to make things interesting now. It's a new track and today we got a little bit of a feel for it, learned which way it goes and the track seems ok. It's a little bit tight in a few places but the grip in the rain is not as bad as I'd heard it might be. It was quite bumpy, even in the wet, and with some of the corners you can tell that you're going backwards - they're pretty open on the entry and tight on the exit. It's going to be tight and a little bit hard to pass here but the layout isn't exactly too tricky - for instance there's no blind corners. It looks like the fast corners at the end of the back straight are going to be the most technical, tricky section and it's the fast corners where you can make up the most time. We'll come back tomorrow ready to put in a hard day's work."

Pedrosa added, "I've never seen anything like the conditions today. Even Malaysia last year wasn't like this and I haven't seen the garage getting flooded before - it's amazing. This morning we could learn a little about the track and it seems quite bumpy, and a little slippery in the wet. It's narrow too so it could be pretty difficult to overtake but we'll see. Tomorrow morning we will have a lot to do in the two-hour session. Also, because we've lost the time this afternoon, it will be tricky to choose race tyres and set-up because the temperature and conditions in the afternoon are different to the morning. Effectively we'll have just half an hour of afternoon time to do this before we use the qualifying tyres towards the end of the session. So, it's going to be a busy day!"

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