“Very positive step” in FP1 for Pedrosa

Dani Pedrosa analysed a solid opening session at the eni Motorrad Grand Prix Deutschland on Friday, where he set the fastest lap of the hour with a best time of 1’22.521. Placing the Spaniard 0.274s ahead of nearest rival Casey Stoner, it was the first time this season the Spaniard has been fastest in the first practice of a race weekend.

The immediacy of his pace, the consistency of his lap times and the general feeling on his RC212V were all huge bonuses for Pedrosa, who was extremely pleased to have made such a strong start to the GP at a track where he has experienced highs and lows before.

“It’s great because for the first time this season I’ve got the best time on Friday and this is a very positive step for us,” said the 24 year-old. “We normally struggle initially, but today we did a very good job in first practice and I’m very happy for this. It’s also a good result because tomorrow it could rain and so it was very important to get the basic set-up fixed on the first day here. I hope we will have one more practice session in the dry tomorrow, but it looks likely that at least one session will be wet.”

Ever the perfectionist Pedrosa outlined further work on specific areas of the set-up of his machine for tomorrow in order to arrive at Sunday’s race in the sharpest possible shape.

“Today we were focused mainly on trying the different Bridgestone tyre compounds available for the race, and we were able to be fast with the soft and also with the hard option,” he explained, before highlighting where he wants to improve more. “For tomorrow we need to keep working on the suspension and the electronics because I think we can still improve in some parts of the lap.”