“When you start from 13th you are always going to have a lot of work to do but that was the best bike I’ve had underneath me all season so I want to say a huge ‘thank you’ to the team for that, they have worked so hard.
I got a great start and was able to lead the second group for a while until a couple of guys came past and I lost my rhythm a bit. I made a little mistake under braking on the back straight, ran wide and lost a lot of time but I fought back and got in with the group again. I was having great fun but unfortunately the left handlebar came kind of loose about halfway through the race and cost me a lot of time – that’s when a lot of the guys got past me.
I know I’m coming out with a lot of excuses this year but a loose handlebar at that speed is pretty scary! The guys are looking at how it happened. Anyway, man it was a hard battle. I know we were only fighting for fifth or sixth but it felt like there was a title on the line out there! Click here to read more
“Unfortunately qualifying is not our strong point at the moment but we made some improvements with the bike in free practice this morning. We changed the transmission, which helped a bit, and made a few more tweaks that made the general feeling of the bike a bit better but for the afternoon we tried some stuff that didn’t work so well. We had to go back to what we had this morning and I was only able to go a little bit faster, which is why the qualifying position isn’t great.
The cooler track today made it hard to get heat into the left-hand side of the tyre. You don’t get good balance with the single compound tyres around here, for me at least, the right side is really good but it’s hard to get heat into the left. We’ll see what the weather brings, obviously we could do with it being nice and hot, line up and see what we got!”
1. Valentino Rossi ITA Fiat Yamaha Team 1′36.025
2. Dani Pedrosa SPA Repsol Honda Team 1′36.110
3. Jorge Lorenzo SPA Fiat Yamaha Team 1′36.393
4. Casey Stoner AUS Ducati Marlboro Team 1′36.633
5. Colin Edwards USA Monster Yamaha Tech 3 1′36.760
6. Loris Capirossi ITA Rizla Suzuki MotoGP 1′36.953
7. Chris Vermeulen AUS Rizla Suzuki MotoGP 1′37.194
8. Andrea Dovizioso ITA Repsol Honda Team 1′37.237 Click here to read more
1. Randy de Puniet FRA LCR Honda MotoGP 1′37.842
2. Valentino Rossi ITA Fiat Yamaha Team 1′37.847
3. Casey Stoner AUS Ducati Marlboro Team 1′37.877
4. Jorge Lorenzo SPA Fiat Yamaha Team 1′38.061
5. Andrea Dovizioso ITA Repsol Honda Team 1′38.092
6. Dani Pedrosa SPA Repsol Honda Team 1′38.194
7. Colin Edwards USA Monster Yamaha Tech 3 1′38.205
8. Chris Vermeulen AUS Rizla Suzuki MotoGP 1′38.350 Click here to read more
Repsol Honda riders Dani Pedrosa and Nicky Hayden looked set to score their first double podium of the season at Assen today. Impressive Pedrosa finished the race a strong second to retake the World Championship lead at the halfway point of the 2008 MotoGP series. Hayden ran strong too, just a few seconds down on his team-mate throughout, until his bike suddenly slowed within sight of the finish. The American coasted over the line in fourth, just seconds after compatriot Colin Edwards had passed him to snatch third place.
The race began under threatening skies but the rain stayed away as the Repsol Honda duo quickly established themselves in second and third behind winner Casey Stoner. HRC technicians are now examining Hayden’s RC212V to discover the exact cause of his end-of-race electronics problem.
Nicky Hayden, finished 4th, 7th in World Championship Click here to read more
Comments (0) 
