Dovizioso and Pedrosa receive new engine

Factory Honda pair Dani Pedrosa and Andrea Dovizioso have a new engine at their disposal this weekend at the Alice Motorrad Grand Prix Deutschland, an update from HRC which they hope will be a specific advantage at Sachsenring.

Having incorporated a new chassis into the RC212V as of the visits to Catalunya and Assen, both riders are pleased to see the prototype Honda evolving further as the season progresses.

The pair have been pushing for improvements since the beginning of the year and Pedrosa proved at Laguna Seca that their package is already reaching an acceptable level of competitiveness – so it is hoped that with the new engine will allow them to take another step forward in Germany.

The Sachsenring track is ‘tight and twisty’, short in overall distance, one of the slowest on the calendar and requires a specific gear ratio setting given that the riders only use first gear at the start and spend a lot of time using third and fourth. The new Honda engine has been developed to assist the riders with better power delivery and the German track could be ideally suited to demonstrating that benefit.

Speaking in Thursday’s official press conference, previewing the ninth GP of the season, Pedrosa said, “The new engine is to improve power delivery because our engine is always very ‘peaky’ and we have lot of spinning in the lower gears, so we are trying to avoid this and trying to get better drive out of corners.”

For Dovizioso, meanwhile, having undertaken much of the team’s test work since his recruitment into the factory set-up over the winter - due to the injuries which restricted Pedrosa’s availability - the update is much anticipated.

The Italian rider is looking to get back in the podium fight having crashed out of the last two races and he commented enthusiastically, “Honda have brought a new engine, so I am excited to try it, especially at this track because it is very slow and the new engine should be better in terms of its character. I am confident about it.”