Casey Stoner always seems to be the odd man out, while everyone got in some lap time in the rain and on full wet tires – so the Jerez track must have been very wet in the first afternoon hours – but when the Australian decided it was time for him to go out it wasn’t wet enough for him so after just three laps decided to sit out the remaining hours and save Bridgestone some money on tires.
“We realised that the weather conditions weren’t really suitable for what we needed to work on today so we decided to wait for the heavier rain, which never appeared,” said Stoner.
“We went out briefly but realised it wasn’t really wet enough to work on anything regarding wet set-up and there was no reason for us to stay out on track and ruin sets of tyres.
They were 50/50 conditions and you never set up a bike for these circumstances.
I hope the weather improves tomorrow so we can continue our plan.
”Dani Pedrosa has never been known as a wet weather specialist – his best ride in the rain before crashing out while leading by over 7 seconds was at Sachsenring in 2008, but the Repsol Honda man was the first rider to head out in the rain and was also the fastest before calling it day an hour and half before the end of the session and didn’t get any action in on the drying track and ended up 12th overall.
Dani Pedrosa said, “I decided to go out when it started raining properly because it’s always good to get some information about the behaviour of the bike in wet conditions before the beginning of the season, and even more important with a new bike.
Obviously, the set up of the bike was pretty standard on chassis and electronics, but I had good feelings riding it, the bike worked well and it gives me confidence.
If it’s not raining tomorrow we will go back to the testing programme we had planned for today: basically to try some new ideas for the chassis and the electronics and if we have time I’d like to do a race simulation.
Everything has been positive and smooth so far, so let’s hope to close the pre season with a good result.
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