Pedrosa under circuit record at Indianapolis whilst Stoner finishes fifth

The Repsol Honda Team kicked off the Red Bull Indianapolis Grand Prix in fine form today, with Dani Pedrosa topping the time sheets on the first day of free practice with Casey Stoner in fifth position at the World famous Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

With heavy rainfall from the night before, track conditions were poor in the morning session. However, by the afternoon the grip level had improved considerably and both Repsol Honda riders made progress with their bike set up. Pedrosa took advantage of the better conditions, lapping 2.4 seconds quicker than the morning session with a 1'39.783 - faster than the circuit record of 1'39.807 set by Stoner here in 2011.

Stoner, the fastest in FP1, also improved his lap times by 1.3 seconds in the afternoon, but late in the session he experienced an issue in the rear of the bike which is still being investigated and prevented him from setting a faster time than 1'40.623, placing him in 5th at the end of day one.

Dani Pedrosa

"This afternoon the track was a little better than in the morning and we were able to improve our lap times quite a lot and also try the hard tyres, which worked much better than the soft specification we tried this morning. As we saw today, the times will keep dropping during the weekend with more rubber on the asphalt, so we have to continue working hard on the bike. We found a good base today to move on from; we can improve every area still, focusing especially on the suspension and electronics and also care about the tyres because it's very hot out there and the tyres dropped off very quick."

Casey Stoner

"We tried a couple of things this morning but with the track being so slippery we didn't really take anything from it. This afternoon we knew what we wanted to try after the morning session but unfortunately we had some issues with the bike. We had a problem with electronics on one exit and then a strange feeling in the rear on a later exit, perhaps a stone got into the chain or something, we're not sure yet. Due to the fact we couldn't identify what the problem was, we decided to use the second bike and I only managed a few laps. A slightly disappointing afternoon and we know what we want to work on tomorrow morning."

Repsol Honda Team Press Release

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Source: http://www.zimbio.com/MotoGP/articles/sLSiMUvgkhE/Pedrosa+under+circuit+record+Indianapolis

Nobuatsu Aoki Takuma Aoki Hiroshi Aoyama Shuhei Aoyama Andre Luc Appietto