Dani Pedrosa happy and hoping to close gap to Casey Stoner

Today the first day of the Australian Grand Prix saw Repsol Honda’s Casey Stoner and Dani Pedrosa topping the time sheets at Phillip Island. Casey set the best lap time of 1’29.999, faster than the circuit record (Nicky Hayden, 1’30.059 in 2008), with Dani in second position, 0.8 tenths off the Australian hero with 1’30.884.

Dani aims to keep his current momentum and finish in front of Jorge Lorenzo again to bring the fight for the championship to the last round in Valencia.

The action will continue tomorrow with the last free practice in the morning and qualifying in the afternoon, but the Repsol Honda Team garage will be busy early in the morning to prepare a Honda RC213V for a demonstration run with Mick Doohan, the five time 500cc World Champion, at 09h15 local time.

DANI PEDROSA
“Fortunately, today we’ve had two dry sessions which was not expected and that’s good at a circuit like this as the first day is important to find a good direction for the set up. I only tried the soft rear tyre today, so tomorrow will be important to test the hard compound and some different ideas on the electronics and suspension to improve the feeling. Casey is going very fast here, as expected, so let’s see if it stays dry tomorrow and we can work on the pace and close the gap to Casey”.

Source; Repsol Honda Team