Dani Pedrosa stormed to a brilliant pole position at sunny Misano this afternoon, winning a thrilling duel with World Championship rival Jorge Lorenzo (Yamaha). Pedrosa’s pole was backed up by strong performances from HRC’s two satellite riders, Stefan Bradl (LCR Honda MotoGP RC213V) and Alvaro Bautista (San Carlo Honda Gresini RC213V) who will both start tomorrow’s San Marino Grand Prix from the second row of the grid.
Jonathan Rea making his MotoGP debut as substitute for injured World Champion Casey Stoner made excellent progress to qualify on the third row.
Pedrosa has made impressive inroads into Lorenzo’s points lead in recent weeks, winning three of the last four races to sit just 13 points behind his fellow Spaniard with six races remaining. His fourth pole of the year could not have come at a better moment.
The former 125 and 250 World Champion left his crucial move until the very end of qualifying, with pole swapping hands four times in the last few minutes. Pedrosa went fastest just 20 seconds before the chequered flag came out, dislodging Lorenzo who had knocked Cal Crutchlow (Yamaha) off the top only seconds before. Crutchlow had been fastest after taking over from ever-impressive rookie Bradl.
Pedrosa’s advantage over Lorenzo isn’t huge – only 0.018s – but being on pole is always a good psychological boost, especially after two difficult days of practice during which rain dramatically limited track time. Track conditions were so poor yesterday that most top riders did not even venture out. When the circuit was as good as dry, track temperatures were too low to bring slick tyres up to operating temperature, and when it was wet it was not wet enough to allow riders to run rain tyres without tearing them up in just a few laps. So Pedrosa spent both Friday sessions in the pits, as did Rea. Bautista did venture out yesterday afternoon, but only for eight laps. This morning conditions still were not perfect but the track was once again busy, with Bautista fastest.
That left everyone with just the one-hour qualifying session in which to work on set-up, choose race tyres and do their ‘time attack’ to achieve the best possible grid position. Not only that, riders had to wait a while before grip reached a level that allowed them to push to their limits. Pedrosa’s remarkable performance proved once again that he has a brilliant crew behind him, able to give him the best-possible machine even when time is extremely limited.
Dani Pedrosa, Repsol Honda: pole position – 1m 33.857s
“It was a pretty tight session and no time to rest as we had to test the tyres, suspension and find some settings, as well as finding some feeling for myself! At the end we managed a good lap to take pole, which is very important as the first part of the circuit is very tight, so a good start is necessary. The setting on the bike is good so I hope to have a good race tomorrow. Thanks to all my team, we did a very good job in a very short time after a strange weekend due to the weather conditions, but we remained focused to have a good qualifying session and be ready for tomorrow’s race.”
Jonathan Rea, Repsol Honda: 9th – 1m 35.358s
“I woke up this morning pretty stressed after yesterday’s missed sessions and then FP3 was also pretty useless so I’ve got to be happy with a third row start, as my goal was top ten. I’m learning something on every single run and the team did a great job on translating my feedback to give me good settings on the bike. I’m taking things step by step and the limit is still quite a way off, but I don’t really want to find that limit just yet. I’m taking my time. I want to thank Repsol Honda for this opportunity, I’m really enjoying the experience and don’t want it to end! I know tomorrow’s race is going to be tough. I just want go out, give my best and have a clean race. I’m pretty nervous, but when the lights go out I’ll be in race mode and we’ll see what happens".
Repsol Honda Team Press Release
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Source: http://www.zimbio.com/MotoGP/articles/A83SYSRnO-8/Pedrosa+Honda+grab+crucial+Pole+Misano
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