Solid qualifying for Repsol Honda Team at Silverstone

The Repsol Honda Team will start tomorrow's British Grand Prix from the first and second row of the grid, with Casey Stoner in third position and Dani Pedrosa in fifth.

Casey Stoner, Repsol Honda Team

Photo by: Repsol Media

Once again, the cold temperatures, strong winds and temperamental weather have plagued the MotoGP™ riders here in Silverstone. This morning track temperatures didn't rise above 16 degrees and then during a very busy qualifying session rain arrived in the final 10 minutes preventing the riders from maximising their final set of soft tyres.

Casey, fastest in FP3, and Dani, more confident than yesterday, managed to make another step forward and both improved their lap times by more than a second in qualifying. Casey's lap time places him third with 2'03.423, just 0.1 tenths off pole position, and Dani finished fifth with 2'03.835, half second off the best time.

Casey Stoner

"This afternoon was a little disappointing to be honest. We began the session and struggled with the bike, we couldn't really get any edge grip and seemed to make the chatter worse. We were trying to fix some problems we had in the morning but ended up making them worse so we tried various things to improve them. Finally we found something that was working so we decided to scrap the lap and come in and put a new soft rear tyre on but it didn't work for us as we got out there and the rain started to come, just enough to upset the bike a little. I was waiting for the rain to disappear so I could put a lap in, but unfortunately we didn't get an opportunity and missed our chance at pole. For tomorrow I hope the race is one way or another, not a 50/50 race, but we'll deal with whatever we have and I feel confident with both situations.”

Dani Pedrosa

"We've managed to improve our lap times quite a lot and our position on the grid a little, although by the end of the practice some drops of rain prevented us to make any time attack with the last set of tyres he had ready. I'm satisfied because we've improved the setup of the bike this afternoon and I think we can still do another step forward in the warm-up tomorrow.”