Dani on road to recovery as Dovi doubts Honda credentials
Added on Thursday, March 26th, 2009 by Carole Nash Editor
Dani on road to recovery as Dovi doubts Honda credentials
Dani Pedrosa will, as expected, sit out of this weekend’s MotoGP test in Jerez but Honda bosses are claiming that his recovery is on schedule.
Test rider Kousuke Akiyoshi will stand in for Pedrosa at this weekend’s final pre-season practice before the season opener in Qatar after the Spaniard was left fighting for fitness following a high-side during testing in Losail.
The Honda rider could still be ruled out of the first round of the new season after aggravating existing knee and wrist injuries during the crash but the Honda management remain hopeful that their main rider will be fit to take to the grid on April 12.
“This is an important test for the Repsol Honda Team and we’re looking to use these two days to maximum effect as we approach the start of the season,” said team manager Kazuhiko Yamano.
“The team gathered a lot of useful data at the previous tests in Sepang and Qatar and it’s our intention to make significant progress in this final pre-season test.
“Dani won’t be riding because it’s important he recovers fully after his operation, and so Kosuke Akiyoshi will ride Dani’s machine. Although in a perfect world Dani would be testing here, we’re confident that Kosuke can ably assist Andrea with our development programme for the RC212V.”
Pedrosa’s Repsol Honda teammate Andrea Dovizioso has been less optimistic ahead of this weekend’s test, claiming that the Honda team still have some serious problems as time runs out before the start of the season.
The Italian, who stepped up to the factory team this season from JiR Scot Honda, claimed that the RC212V suffers from major problems in power and stability.
“Our problems are stability under braking and the engine’s power curve,” he told Motosprint. “They are both equally annoying, also because the proportion between them changes depending on the circuit’s characteristics.
“These two problems are always there, on every track, sometimes one is the worst, other times it’s the other. They’ve never gone away. These are big problems because at turn exits you can’t take advantage of the bike’s potential, which is massive.”
Dovizioso has previously spoken about the culture shock that has come with being involved much more heavily in bike development as a result of being a factory rider and believes that the problems that the team currently has are unlikely to be solved before they reaches Qatar
“I don’t think I’ll be able to take the whole development forward all at the same time [ahead of the first race], because we have very few days of work left,” he said.
“The problems we have now, I don’t think I’ll be able to get rid of them from here to April 12. We’ll only be able to reduce them.”
