Pedrosa predicts fast pace and Stoner breakaway attempt

A rider who knows all about shaking off the other riders and leading from the front, Dani Pedrosa expects an attempt at the same from Casey Stoner when the two line up on the front row in Assen. The Spaniard´s Repsol Honda teammate Nicky Hayden will also be attempting toreel the pair in, from fourth on the grid.

Dani Pedrosa - Second

`I´m very happy with this afternoon´s result, especially because this will be the first time I´ve started from the front row in MotoGP at Assen. The first part of the track is very tight, so it is really important to start from the front row here. Casey will try to escape from the pack at the start, which means it will be crucial to get a good start and try to stay in contact. We still have some improvements to make. This is a very complex track for set-up and we need to try some small changes to help make me feel at ease on the bike because the pace is going to be very fast tomorrow. Once again the weather has played a part, this morning´s rain meant that we couldn´t do any proper work with slicks, so we aren´t yet 100 per cent sure about our race tyre choice. If it rains again tomorrow, the race will be more complicated.´

Nicky Hayden- Fourth

`This morning the bike was working quite good in the wet and on intermediates. That session sucked for learning much about the dry but I got some good experience out there on intermediates front and rear and it felt quite good, I was able to stay out and get a good feel for it. This afternoon seemed to go so quick. We tried a couple of little things on the front, but after the first run we had to go back to what we had before because the changes helped in some areas but overall they made it worse. We started putting our qualifiers and then I had an issue with the clutch which lost us some time in the tyre changes, so ultimately I didn't get to use my last qualifier, so we had one bullet left in the chamber that we didn´t use. The Michelin qualifiers were working awesome round here, every one we put in I kept getting faster, so it would´ve been fun to fire the last one in there. It´s going to be a hard race tomorrow, I´m not making no predictions, we´ll see what we can do, go for the best result we can.´