Today, the Repsol Honda Team were back in action at the Assen circuit on the first day of free practice for the Dutch TT.
With pleasant weather and good track conditions, the Honda factory riders began work on the set up of their RC213V machines and tested some new parts in preparation for Saturday's race.
Casey Stoner and Dani Pedrosa focused on a chassis comparison to improve the chattering issues whilst also spending time working on the tyres and trying different set ups with both soft and hard compounds. In the afternoon, with track temperatures 15 degrees higher than in the morning practice, Pedrosa and Stoner chose to remain on the hard compound, not switching to a new rear soft in the last minutes of the session.
Pedrosa, second quickest in the morning, improved slightly in the afternoon and finished sixth in the combined free practice times with 1'35.080, just 0.2 tenths off the best lap time of the day, while Casey, third in the FP1, didn't improve in the second session and finished the day seventh with 1'35.181.
Dani Pedrosa
"It's been very good to have these temperatures in Assen and it really helps us to take profit of both practice sessions to work on the setup of the bike. We tried different things on the chassis to improve our feeling with the front tyre and we did many laps on both tyres, the soft in the morning and the hard in the afternoon. We are pleased with the steps we made today and I think we have a good basic setting to keep improving tomorrow."
Casey Stoner
"We tried a few things with the bike but weren't really happy with them. We tested another chassis but haven't found many positives with it yet, in the morning if felt like we had slightly less chatter in the front, then this afternoon no real benefit, perhaps a little worse. Everything we're doing, trying to reduce the chatter is just making the bike difficult to ride. We're going to have to rethink things again and come out fresh tomorrow. I'm not too worried about finding the pace, it was just a little bit disappointing this afternoon."
Repsol Honda Press Release
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