This Friday at the Spanish GP in Jerez, Dani Pedrosa returned to the MotoGP track for his first wildcard of the season. The Red Bull KTM veteran even showed competitiveness, but had some issues that relegated him to 14th place in the afternoon session – so he will have to go through the first phase of qualifying.
The Spaniard explained that he had good feelings in FP1, but the second bike gave him some problems during the afternoon session, having to end with that same KTM RC16 after a crash:
– Well, I started the morning with a good feeling, had a good first free practice. And then in the afternoon it wasn’t the same. I had difficulties with one of the bikes, which wasn’t giving me good sensations. And when I decided to go back to the other bike I immediately felt good, but I crashed on the first lap, in turn two. Maybe I attacked a little too much on this first lap and maybe the tire wasn’t ready. And then of course this bike couldn’t continue, so I went back to the other one and had to finish with it. Now we will check what we can do to make both bikes work the same way and then we move forward to have another attempt in Q1.
Asked if he is testing only new solutions for Monday’s test or also has already tested parts, Pedrosa replied: ‘It’s 50/50. We have some things as a base from previous tests, but we are also testing some things. This morning was good, but this afternoon as I said this second bike was not on point and then I couldn’t get any information or anything because we were simply trying to deal with why the bike was different‘.
