Satellite Honda teams receive clutch update

Although Repsol Honda have repeatedly insisted that the strong race starts seen by Dani Pedrosa and Nicky Hayden thus far in 2008 have been solely down to rider ability their Honda RC212V prototypes are clearly set-up well to get away from the grid efficiently, meaning that a clutch update this weekend from HRC for their satellite teams should be warmly received.

Home rider Randy de Puniet is one rider who will hope to improve on a hitherto less than impressive run of race starts with a new clutch on his Honda LCR satellite 800cc machine at his home race this weekend.

As the French rider´s team Technical Head Christophe Bourguignon told motogp.com, `We have a clutch evolution from HRC which we hope will improve our start performance. We have had instability with starts, because we have had some really good practice starts but our four race starts have been average, or even bad.´

`We hope this can give us more stability so that we can at least keep our place on the grid during GPs, because we have been qualifying well and the competition is so high.´

For Antonio Jimenez, Chief Mechanic on Shinya Nakano´s side of the San Carlo Honda Gresini pit-box, his take on upgrade is that, `the new clutch should help reduce rear tyre `hopping´, so that when you shift down a gear you get less rear wheel locking. We also expect to have a better start with this clutch.´

Meanwhile, Andrea Dovizioso´s Crew Chief in the JiR Team Scot team, Pietro Caprara, believes the clutch will be more important to assisting his rider´s braking capabilities than improving his race starts.

He said, `For braking, especially engine braking, this clutch will be much more easy to manage and it should basically decrease the jumping, which we call `hopping´. It will be useful for the rider and his riding style and will improve the character of the engine braking. In terms of starts I´m not sure but I don´t think there will be a big difference from the old one.´