Pedrosa and Hayden make the most of a wet Jerez

Dani Pedrosa riding the RC212V under the rain. © Rivero The Repsol Honda Team riders were busy testing at Jerez on Monday following Sunday's Grand Prix of Spain, together with most of the other contenders in this year's MotoGP World Championship. In contrast to the bright sunshine enjoyed by a record crowd over the race weekend at the famous Andalusian circuit, rain greeted the riders this morning and fell intermittently all day.

 

World Champion Nicky Hayden and his Spanish team-mate Dani Pedrosa made the most of the conditions to undertake some valuable wet testing on their new-for-2007 RC212V machines. As well as adapting the settings for the 800cc Honda, the Repsol Honda pair tried various Michelin wet tyres. Though the continuously changing conditions led to inconsistent lap times for everybody, Hayden and Pedrosa were able to gather useful technical data to aid the engineers in honing the performance of the bike in lower grip conditions.

 

Nicky Hayden set a best lap time of 1'52"632, completing a total of 67 laps: "The weather was pretty wet today so we took advantage of the track time to try learn more about the bike. A lot of the same issues we're having in the dry we're having in the wet too so the feeling was mixed, but I was able to get faster as the day went on and collected a lot of useful data. Hopefully tomorrow we'll get some better weather and make some further progress."

 

His team-mate Dani Pedrosa completed a total of 51 laps with a fastet lap time of 1'53"240: "Today was useful because I haven't ridden this new bike in wet conditions very much during winter testing so it was good to be able to get a feeling for how the bike behaves in the rain. I also tried a few types of Michelin's wet weather tyres. The conditions were quite variable today so the lap time does not mean so much - still I'm glad to have gained this experience."

 

The team will remain at Jerez for a further day of testing tomorrow when the weather is expected to improve marginally, with a lesser chance of rain. Once the test is complete the hard-working factory Honda squad will load the crates in preparation for the trip to Istanbul for the Turkish Grand Prix, which takes place on April 22.

(Repsol Honda Team)

 

Official lap times

1	Olivier Jacque	Kawasaki Racing	1m 51.422s	52 laps
2	Randy de Puniet	Kawasaki Racing	1m 51.502s	59
3	Chris Vermeulen	Rizla Suzuki	1m 51.536s	27
4	Kenny Roberts Jr	Team Roberts Honda	1m 51.567s	30
5	Casey Stoner	Ducati Marlboro Team	1m 51.736s	21
6	Carlos Checa	LCR Honda	1m 51.827s	44
7	Valentino Rossi	Fiat Yamaha Team	1m 51.899s	41
8	Alex Barros	D’Antin Ducati	1m 52.129s	36
9	Toni Elias	Gresini Honda	1m 52.198s	56
10	Shinya Nakano	Konica Minolta Honda	1m 52.212s	53
11	Nicky Hayden	Repsol Honda Team	1m 52.632s	67
12	Marco Melandri	Gresini Honda	1m 52.842s	45
13	Alex Hofmann	D’Antin Ducati	1m 52.904s	55
14	Colin Edwards	Fiat Yamaha Team	1m 53.104s	36
15	Dani Pedrosa	Repsol Honda Team	1m 53.240s	51
16	Sylvain Guintoli	Tech 3 Yamaha	1m 55.992s	44
17	Makoto Tamada	Tech 3 Yamaha	1m 57.917s	38
18	Kousuke Akiyoshi	Rizla Suzuki MotoGP	1m 58.635s	36
19	Vittorio Guareschi	Ducati Marlboro Team	2m 00.291s	31

 

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