HONDA RACING:

Repsol Honda Team riders Dani Pedrosa and Andrea Dovizioso finished in third and fifth places in the first practice session for the Grand Prix of the Czech Republic today. On the famous plunging and climbing curves of the Brno circuit, both factory Honda riders made a positive impression as the motorcycle World Championship returned to action.

Dani Pedrosa was pleased to make a competitive start to his Brno weekend after enjoying the benefits of the short MotoGP summer break. Re-energised after three-weeks away from the race track, Pedrosa quickly got down to business and was able to begin evaluating a new swing-arm on his RC212V race machine. The 23-year-old Spaniard finished 0.989 behind Jorge Lorenzo in first place and remains confident of closing the gap tomorrow.

Andrea Dovizioso was riding his first Grand Prix practice session as a MotoGP winner, and the Italian confirmed that it was a great feeling riding out on track today. Dovizioso, who has come second at this track three times in the smaller Grand Prix classes, finished the day 1.577s back from Lorenzo and will focus on improving the feeling on the brakes in tomorrow’s two sessions, as well as trying the new swing-arm for the first time.

DANI PEDROSA – 3rd 1m 57.584s

“It was good to get back on track after the summer break and I’m feeling very good on the bike now. I’m happy we’ve made a positive start to the weekend because sometimes we’ve struggled a little for direction on Fridays, but today was better in that respect. We still need to close the gap to the front riders and this is what we’ll be working on tomorrow. We tried a new swing-arm from HRC here and we’ll continue to test it tomorrow because today we were still working on the general machine settings for this track. Overall, I’m pleased with how today went.”

ANDREA DOVIZIOSO – 5th 1m 58.172s

“It felt great to ride out of the pit-lane today and onto the track as a MotoGP winner, and I enjoyed the summer break all the more after the victory at Donington. I’m under no illusions though – we have to work hard so that I can repeat the performance in dry conditions and today we were not as close to the front riders as we would have liked. We need to make some adjustments to the handling under braking because this is an area we can clearly improve on. Tomorrow morning we will try the new swing-arm if the conditions are suitable. I’m sure we can move forward from here.”

KAZUHIKO YAMANO – REPSOL HONDA TEAM MANAGER

“Today we spent the session tailoring the machines to this track and it was a positive start to our weekend. Our rivals in front are still quite a long way clear in terms of time though, so we’ll focus on closing that gap considerably tomorrow. Both Dani and Andrea are looking in good shape. Dani has had some extra time to fully recover physically, and of course Andrea received a big boost by winning the last race in Britain. So the Repsol Honda Team is positive about its prospects for this second phase of the season.”