Yamaha Factory Racing’s Jorge Lorenzo topped the practice timesheets on Friday at Misano, being the only rider to dip under the 1:34 mark on a hot and humid summer day on the Adriatic coast of Italy. Lorenzo was one of three riders to dip under the lap record, with Casey Stoner (who undercut the lap record in the morning practice) only .076 seconds behind the Yamaha rider, with Stoner’s Repsol Honda teammate Dani Pedrosa third quickest with 1:34.205, although he had to use the soft tires to set his time. San Carlo Gresini Honda’s Marco Simoncelli improved by more than half second from his morning time to come in fourth quickest, while Yamaha’s Ben Spies was the only rider unable to better his morning lap times as he came in fifth. Monster Tech 3 Yamaha’s Colin Edwards came in 10th on the timesheets, while Nicky Hayden trailed in 13th spot for the day.
Yamaha's Jorge Lorenzo improved...
Yamaha's Jorge Lorenzo improved his morning practice time by over a second to top the Friday practice timesheets at Misano.
“I feel much more comfortable on the bike this afternoon,” said Lorenzo. “The change we made to the setting is very similar to Mugello one, and there I fight for the win. To be honest I didn’t expect so much change, so we improve more than one second this afternoon. But we made it, and we are close to the top. Casey and Dani are going so quick, so fast, but at least we are there with them, this is the important thing. We can’t be one second slower than them; we must be the same as them, or maybe two or three tenths slower, but not one second like at Indy.”
Repsol Honda's Casey Stoner...
Repsol Honda's Casey Stoner is right on Lorenzo's tail, and figures with some improvements in the first split that he can be on top come qualifying.
“We made a pretty good step this morning, everything went pretty good and the bike was working well,” admitted Stoner. “Tried a few things this afternoon, but we had a problem with air in the brake lines so we lost a little bit of time in the first part. Then we did race distance on the soft tire so we got some good data on that, and we’re doing some reasonably competitive times, but not really quite good enough. We tried a few different directions and steps, went with the harder rear in the second part of the session, and I found it to be working a little bit better, but unfortunately the direction we went with the bike wasn’t the right one. So we’re looking forward to tomorrow, we think the data we got today we can definitely make some steps forward. If we can make some time in T1, we’re fastest in the next three sectors, so we’re not worried. We think we can improve the bike quite substantially, but we’ve got some work to do to get through that T1 a little better.”
Dani Pedrosa is looking for...
Dani Pedrosa is looking for a little more speed and setup so that he can use the harder option rear tire.
“We’ve been trying a lot of bike settings to get the hard tires to work,” confessed Pedrosa. “I hope that we can find some improvement tomorrow. We have to focus on which race tire we’re going to use tomorrow, and find a setup that will allow us to go a little bit faster. The track is very bumpy, and that makes the job more difficult, and the grip is not awesome today but hopefully it will get a little bit better tomorrow.”
Yamaha's Ben Spies was second...
Yamaha's Ben Spies was second quickest in the morning session, but was unable to improve on his time during the afternoon.
“It wasn’t a great session,” related Spies about the day. “I’m not happy with some of the things that happened, but we had to try a lot of things too. We’ve been working a little bit on rider position since before Indy, and we kinda came up with a good feeling for me. We tried to go more in that direction here this afternoon and it was too much. So we had to change and we lost about 20 minutes of the session so that kind of hurt us. Other than that, we tried all the tires, we went fast with a lot of laps on them, but we didn’t get to work on a couple of things I wanted to work on this morning. I think we can take positives from both sessions, we learned stuff some that worked and didn’t work, but we need to work harder for tomorrow, we need to improve some grip on the bike. But overall feeling with the bike and speed I’m actually pretty happy with, so we need to keep moving in a positive direction and hopefully not lose any more time, because we just spent too much time doing nothing today. We were working on a lot of different stuff on the bike and I wasn’t worried about a lap time. I’m not too bothered right now because we’re taking each weekend by weekend, and we’re not having to worry about a championship so just try to get the most out of it we can.”
Colin Edwards was 10th quickest...
Colin Edwards was 10th quickest on Friday, and announced that he will be riding for the Forward Racing CRT MotoGP team in 2012.
Edwards made the announcement at Misano that he would be riding for the Forward Racing CRT (Claiming Rules Team, using production engine parts in a prototype chassis), but he was still riding hard for the Monster Tech 3 Yamaha team that he’s been a part of for three years. “Not too good really,” was Edwards’ assessment of his Friday practice sessions. “We struggled this morning, we couldn’t really get a good feeling. This afternoon we went out, didn’t really change the bike a whole lot. We know last year I felt pretty comfortable here with the bike setting. So we’re going to change some things around, we’re going to play with the front geometry a little bit; just get it a little more stable, it just feels nervous, no contact, and I’m losing a lot of time through the fast rights, I don’t have the contact to throw it in there, and other places too, just getting some traction. So we’ll play around with it, we got a good idea. We’ll be faster tomorrow. I’d like a half-second; if we could gain a half-second, maybe a little bit more every lap, we’d be sittin’ pretty good.”
Valentino Rossi continues...
Valentino Rossi continues his struggles with the Ducati Desmosedici GP11.1, coming in 11th quickest on Friday.
Valentino Rossi continues his struggles with the Desmosedici GP11.1, amid Ducati Corse technical director Filippo Preziosi holding a press conference to answer all the questions/rumors that have been flying around regarding a total redesign of the bike. “It was a better day, but we’re struggling a lot,” said Rossi. “At the end, we especially lose time in the afternoon with the hard tire, is not our tire, and give to us a big slide in acceleration. At the end when I put on the soft tire, I can improve my lap time and increase a little bit my position. Is nothing fantastic but I was only able to get one clear lap. So I hope tomorrow we can go a bit faster and try to start on the third row maybe and try to have a good race. I don’t have any feeling with the front, every time I push is difficult because I always lose the front, and I don’t have enough feeling to go faster than this. So our situation is quite difficult and our results are quite bad, but we’ll keep working.”
MotoGP Misano Friday practice results:
1. Jorge Lorenzo (SPA) Yamaha 1:33.929
2. Casey Stoner (AUS) Honda 1:34.005
3. Dani Pedrosa (SPA) Honda 1:34.205
4. Marco Simoncelli (ITA) Honda 1:34.444
5. Ben Spies (USA) Yamaha 1:34.466
6. Andrea Dovisioso (ITA) Honda 1:34.989
7. Alvaro Bautista (SPA) Suzuki 1:35.023
8. Hector Barbera (SPA) Ducati 1:35.111
9. Hiroshi Aoyama (JPN) Honda 1:35.282
10. Colin Edwards (USA) Yamaha 1:35.301
11. Valentino Rossi (ITA) Ducati 1:35.331
12. Randy De Puniet (FRA) Ducati 1'35.418
13. Nicky Hayden (USA) Ducati 1:35.419
14. Karel Abraham (CZE) Ducati 1:35.423
15. Cal Crutchlow (GBR) Yamaha 1:35.622
16. Loris Capirossi (ITA) Ducati 1:35.826
17. Toni Elias (SPA) Honda 1:36.196