Although Repsol Honda’s Casey Stoner took the top spot on the Friday practice leaderboard in the closing minutes of the afternoon session from Yamaha Factory Racing’s Ben Spies, he was far from happy about it. In fact, most of the riders weren’t in such a great mood, after finding that the newly repaved section of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway MotoGP road course was much too green, with quite a few riders calling the opening morning practice session “a waste of time” due to the lack of traction and abrasive nature of the new asphalt caused by no rubber on the track.
Casey Stoner was quickest on Friday, but he also vociferously complained of the recently repaved track surface being very slick.
" Terrible. Sorry I can’t be dishonest with that, but I don’t think I’ve ever really ridden on a worse surface other than maybe Qatar when there was a lot of dust on it.
"
When asked what the pavement was like, Stoner was even more brutal in his honesty: “Terrible. Sorry I can’t be dishonest with that, but I don’t think I’ve ever really ridden on a worse surface other than maybe Qatar when there was a lot of dust on it. But at least that dust was kinda consistent; around here where they’ve layered and they’ve joined the two together, there seems to be like these grease slicks on it. You’re riding around the track, it seems consistent and then all of a sudden it’ll just sort of slip away from you. And there just doesn’t seem to be any real reason why. You know honestly, the bumps were a little bit better than last year; there’s still some corners that aren’t fantastic for the bumps and some that are worse than they were in the last years, but in general we haven’t really touched the bike. We’ll see how the track ends up tomorrow. Hopefully with more bikes going around we can improve it.”
Stoner also narrowly missed a beaver that had somehow wandered onto the track. “As I was coming around the corner I saw something out of the corner of my eye, I thought it was just a piece coming off somebody’s bike. As I got around the corner I realized it was, yeah, it was something. I didn’t have a real good look at it…thought it might have been a big gopher or something. Yeah, luckily just got out of the way of that and we both ended up lucky in that incident.”
Ben Spies was second quickest...
Ben Spies was second quickest on Friday, and he also joined the complaints about the lack of grip with the new surface at Indy.
Spies was more diplomatic about the new asphalt’s grip, and felt confident that it would come good by Sunday’s race. “This morning was very, I wouldn’t say dangerous, but it was very unpredictable,” said the Texan. “But it was to be expected, I think with the pavement, the new pavement. It had no rubber on it, so you can’t expect a lot of it. I figured it was going to be like it was the first year when we came here when the new turns one through four was quite slick. And the whole track was like that this morning and it was very inconsistent. This afternoon it was much better and I expected it to be with the rubber. We just gotta basically with this kind of pavement keep our fingers crossed that we just don’t see rain. If we don’t see rain the track’s going to be great, I think Sunday. It’s going to continue to get better. It was 100 times better this afternoon than it was this morning, but I think there’s still room for improvement with the more laps we go around.”
When asked about the fact that while the racing line will get better with more rubber on it, anywhere off the racing line will be slick, possibly causing a processional race because of the scarcity of passing opportunities, Spies admitted, “Yeah. I mean it could. I think really the first four turns is where we see a lot of action happening the first lap, so as long as everybody, even if you run a little bit wide, I think you can stay within kinda that eight foot area of the good line, I think it’s OK. You get off line majorly and really try to keep your pace up, you could easily crash and we’ve seen it happen in practice today. The track on the racing line I think it’s going to continue to get better. I’m super happy with how smooth it is, it’s just we need rubber on the track and we need a weekend with no rain and I think it’ll be great.”
Stoner's Repsol Honda teammate...
Stoner's Repsol Honda teammate Dani Pedrosa vaulted up to third quickest as the session closed, just edging out Lorenzo.
Stoner’s Repsol Honda teammate Dani Pedrosa managed to leapfrog fellow Spaniard Jorge Lorenzo for third spot in the closing minutes of the afternoon session, with both riders making massive improvements in their lap times from the morning. Pedrosa was just as scathing in his comments on the track surface. “It’s absolutely not improved, it’s very slippery,” said Pedrosa. “There is absolutely no grip. It was much, much better in the way before it was. But, you know, it’s like it is now and there’s nothing to do. Just we have to try to set up the better we can the bike, because the grip is so poor you just can’t lean the bike in the corners and the tires looked destroyed this morning. We hope with a little more running, a little more rubber on the track we can get a little better grip performance and tire wear, because at the moment it’s completely horrible.”
Lorenzo improved his opinion of the track surface as more time and rubber was put onto it, although he also felt that getting off the racing line could be hazardous. "Luckily the track was better in the afternoon because this morning it was terrible. Now it seems quite similar to last year but if you make a mistake in some corners and go wide and go in the dirty line you can crash. But if you can keep the normal line it is similar to last year and I'm happy for that.” Like nearly all the others riders, Lorenzo was finding the new asphalt was also chewing up tires at an alarming rate. “We have problems in the front, we have solve this. The front tire has some graining in the left side and we have to solve this for tomorrow because in five or six laps it is very difficult to keep going. Luckily it is better, the lap time is now close to last year but I don't feel this asphalt is the best in the world."
MotoGP Indianapolis Friday practice results:
1. Casey Stoner (AUS) Honda 1:40.724
2. Ben Spies (USA) Yamaha 1:40.918
3. Dani Pedrosa (SPA) Honda 1:41.205
4. Jorge Lorenzo (SPA) Yamaha 1:41.461
5. Andrea Dovisioso (ITA) Honda 1:41.536
6. Colin Edwards (USA) Yamaha 1:41.699
7. Marco Simoncelli (ITA) Honda 1:41.742
8. Nicky Hayden (USA) Ducati 1:41.789
9. Alvaro Bautista (SPA) Suzuki 1:42.231
10. Randy De Puniet (FRA) Ducati 1:42.339
11. Valentino Rossi (ITA) Ducati 1:42.405
12. Hiroshi Aoyama (JPN) Honda 1:42.673
13. Hector Barbera (SPA) Ducati 1:42.920
14. Loris Capirossi (ITA) Ducati 1:43.034
15. Cal Crutchlow (GBR) Yamaha 1:43.085
16. Toni Elias (SPA) Honda 1:43.230
17. Karel Abraham (CZE) Ducati 1:43.528