San Carlo Honda Gresini riders confident after first practice at Le Mans - MotoGP News
San Carlo Honda Gresini riders are confident after their promising start to the racing weekend at Monster Energy Grand Prix de France, to be held on Sunday, May 15. Italian rider, Marco Simoncelli was second fastest in the final time sheet of the day. Team-mate,
Hiroshi Aoyama, secured eighth spot in the second free practice session.
Marco Simoncelli was fourth fastest after the Repsol Honda trio, in 1-2-3 places. The Honda satellite rider gave his best times for the start of the day, but while entering the second free practice session he was even more better than his first round.
‘Super Sic’ snatched the second seat on the time sheet at the end of the session. He was successful to jump in between Honda factory riders, leaving Dani Pedrosa behind him.
Casey Stoner of Repsol Honda stood out as the top fastest rider throughout the day. He was happy with results of the free practices and will continue to work on the settings to improve the brake feel of his RC212V.
Simoncelli said, “I am happy because we have taken a positive step from the morning to the afternoon. We have improved by almost a second and that is a lot. It is partly down to improving the set-up but also the fact that this morning I was using a soft
front tyre and that is not the best option for me.”
Hiroshi Aoyama also passed the day on a good note, despite the fact that his first session’s position was not good enough at the 13th spot. In the second session, he was more promising when he jumped to eighth place, with an improvement of 1.5
seconds, as compared to his first FP session.
Aoyama, while speaking on his practice session said, “We tried two different bikes today with different set-ups and tried to define a path to follow for tomorrow and Sunday. We are happy we found the right one and we don't have much more work to do.”
The Japanese feels the need to improve the grip factor of his RCV, which will also help to get stability under braking. The team has to bring in some ideas into the bike and Aoyama is confident by the efforts his side is putting in.
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