Pedrosa hoping for improvement on Saturday

Dani Pedrosa was unable to ride at 100% at the Gran Premi Cinzano de Catalunya on Friday due to his problematic right hip and the 23-year-old Spaniard, who won last year’s Barcelona race, ended up two seconds off the pace in Free Practice 1.

It was a more productive day for his team-mate Andrea Dovizioso, however, as the Italian finished the hour-long session in a competitive fourth place, just 0.646s back from pace-setter, Valentino Rossi.

Andrea Dovizioso – 4th

"Today’s result was pretty good and we are not too far from the front which is encouraging - though we still need to close the gap. This afternoon we worked on the set-up of the bike to improve the handling during corner entry and in the turn, which remains our main issue. We tried a different set-up solution on the second bike that worked well and I was able to improve the lap time and reduce the gap to the frontrunners. Fourth place today is a good start but we are still too far from the first three top riders, so we’ll continue to work on this tomorrow."

Dani Pedrosa – 14th

"It’s my home race and already the atmosphere and support is incredible, but of course this wasn’t one of the best days of riding for me. I had a pain-killing injection before I rode this afternoon but it’s still very uncomfortable on the bike and this means I wasn’t able to ride at my normal pace. MotoGP machines are very physical to ride - it’s not like a street bike - so it’s tough when you are not at full strength. It’s frustrating because this is one of my favourite circuits of the season and also one where I have had a lot of good results. However, we certainly aren’t going to give up. It’s a long season and although today didn’t go too well, we’ll come back tomorrow and see what we can do."