MotoGP Assen, Free Practice: Dani Pedrosa “Qualifying tomorrow will certainly be challenging”

Dani Pedrosa finished the first day of MotoGP free practice in Assen in sixth place. The Spanish Honda rider as well as his team-mate Casey Stoner tried the new chassis brought by Honda, but in the end he preferred to continue using (at least for the moment) the previous one. The word is up to him.

“The good weather allowed us to make the most of the two sessions to work on setting up the bike. We tried different chassis solutions to improve the feeling with the front tyre, completing many laps with the soft compound in the morning and the hard one in the afternoon. I'm happy with the progress made and I think I have a good base to start from tomorrow. We need to improve the traction a little more to have more cornering speed. As for the new chassis, there are some differences, but I need to continue the comparison work a little longer because our goal is to improve performance with the front tire and the Assen circuit doesn't have very violent braking. Qualifying tomorrow will definitely be challenging, it's impressive how close we are between first and eighth position. Tomorrow we will try to do our best, in Assen it is very important to start from a good position because the first corner is very narrow.”