The Repsol Honda Team had a very positive start on the first day of free practice at the Grand Prix of Germany, Dani Pedrosa finishing on top in both sessions and team mate Casey Stoner very close behind in second in the combined times. The MotoGP paddock was again subjected to adverse weather conditions in Germany, with one dry session and one wet session.
Sachsenring welcomed the riders with sunshine in the morning´s FP1 and both Dani and Casey found pace very quickly, setting up their RC213V machines and working with the soft tyres for this unique circuit, with 10 of its 13 corners to the left.
Dani, the winner here in the last two years, set the pace in the morning with a best lap time of 1'22.357 and Casey finished second, just 0.087 off the Spaniard.
In the afternoon, the weather conditions changed completely: it began to get dark and by the time the MotoGP riders were getting ready to go out, the rain had arrived. In the wet conditions, Dani and Casey were again competitive: Dani set the fastest lap (1'32.228), 0.180 ahead of Casey.
Dani Pedrosa - 1st 1'22.357
"The weekend has started pretty good for us; I felt comfortable in both the dry and wet conditions, but we only managed half of our plan today. We wanted to test the hard rear tyres in the afternoon, because in theory the hardest compound should be working better in this track where you are leaning to the left a long time, and with the soft the bike slides a lot. Anyway, it's been also good to try the bike in the wet for one practice session because it looks like the weather will again be very unstable. Today I've been using the new chassis we received in Assen and the feeling was ok, but weather permitting, I would like to compare both chassis again tomorrow before qualifying. We've had a good start, but we cannot relax; the times are very close here, as usual, and we still have margin to improve".
Casey Stoner - 2nd 1'22.444
"We were pretty happy in both conditions today. In the dry we felt comfortable and we had a consistently higher pace than the others and we're confident we can go quite a bit faster so that was definitely a positive. We were struggling a little at the beginning in the wet, we needed to find more rear traction but the conditions weren't perfect as they were changing throughout the session with some parts of the track drying out and then more rain arriving. It was difficult to get a consistent feeling for the track but we were close to the front and fairly happy. Unfortunately we have some bad chatter in the rear, especially on the right hand corners, both in the wet and dry so we need to improve this before the race".
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