Dani Pedrosa may have set the fastest lap (1.
47.
705) in today’s MotoGP race at Mugello, but the Spaniard just didn’t have the pace that his fellow countryman on the Yamaha had, a spinning rear tire and chatter made him decide to cease and desist on trying to chase Lorenzo down, and he settled in another comfortable podium and keep his second place in the standings.
“I braked late at the first corner but I missed something and Jorge was already there.
Then a few corners later I was surprised by Dovizioso, he passed me also and it took a few laps for me to make the overtake on him as he was very strong in the first corner so I had to pass him in another part of the circuit.
By this point Jorge had already opened up a small gap but I tried to get back in my rhythm and I started to lap in the 1’47’s.
When I started to drop into these times though, my tyre began to spin a lot in the rear and I got some chatter so I was worried for the tyre.
At this point I decided to slow down a little because to catch Jorge meant laps in 1’47’s.
He was riding very strong so I have to congratulate him, finally for me a second place is a good result overall and I want to thank all the team for their hard work this weekend,” said PedrosaFirst off, Casey Stoner was not punished for his pass on Alvaro Bautista, apparently the Race Direction viewed the pass (along with the one that Bradl did on Hayden) and deemed it just a racing incident.
However, the Australian has been struggling all weekend long with tire issues and his nervousness showed through in several occasions, but in the post race conference he apologized to Bautista in a round about way, saying that the blame was to be divided 50/50, stating that he had braked late, but when they touched they were pratically side-by-side and that Bautista must have see him and decided to close the door on him anyway.
“It’s definitely not the way we planned it, we thought today we could be fighting for the podium and maybe have the pace to stay with Dani,” said Stoner.
Jorge has ridden fantastically all weekend and hasn’t really put a foot wrong but I think a third position would have been good today.
However, we just couldn’t get the bike working.
During our last attempts in warm up we couldn’t get anything to work, we weren’t very happy with the bike today and I just didn’t feel comfortable.
I made a mistake in the race, I had a bit of a shake exiting turn 11 and when I arrived at turn 12 I had no brakes, I was squeezing them as hard as I could and thought I had enough brake power to stop before the edge of the track but I had too much momentum and had to ride through the gravel trap which wasted a lot of time.
I’m sorry for the incident with Álvaro, I went to make the pass into turn 2 and he started to close my front off and I couldn’t do anything.
”