NAKANO - PEDROSA NAKANO @ 1.70 (Centrebet)
Pedrosa news:
Dani Pedrosa will continue to compete in the Czech Grand Prix weekend despite struggling with continued pain from his hand and wrist injuries during Friday practice.
The factory Honda rider was slowest of all in the morning and could only improve to 16th later on, but said that Michelin's uncompetitiveness was a more significant problem than his injuries.
"My left wrist and index finger are still hurting when I ride the bike, and the tyres are not helping the situation," he said.
"The asphalt is new, but it's the same situation for everyone. We have tried several different solutions today and so far we still haven't found the right tyres for the race.
"We will keep working tomorrow, looking for the best tyres and working on the machine. We hope we can get some more dry track time and then we will see for Sunday."
Team manager Kazuhiko Yamano is confident that Pedrosa, whose teammate Nicky Hayden is missing the race due to an ankle injury sustained at the X Games, will be able to cope with his discomfort, and is optimistic that the tyre problems will ease.
"Dani is still feeling pain from his left hand injury," Yamano said. "But he can ride and we believe that the situation will get better.
"We are having some difficulties with tyre choice, Dani is lacking contact feeling here, especially from the front tyre. His crew have made some small adjustments today, mainly to the suspension. We hope he will be in better shape tomorrow."
Nakano news:
On the one hand, fourth position during Friday free practice at Brno marked an excellent performance for Shinya Nakano on his factory Honda debut - on the other hand, rookie Honda Gresini team-mate Alex de Angelis was only 0.036secs slower with his satellite machine.
Nakano, who has been given a factory spec RCV to help develop Honda's 2009 satellite bike, was third fastest at the end of his very first session on the 'Pedrosa-spec' machine, before losing out on 'best of the rest' behind Casey Stoner and Valentino Rossi to Suzuki's Loris Capirossi at the end of the afternoon hour.
"I'm happy with both free practice sessions today - this morning everything was new for me so I just focused on getting to know the bike, getting used to riding it and then in the afternoon the feeling improved a lot," said the Japanese, who finished the day as the top Honda rider, 0.997secs from Stoner. "Without knowing whether it will rain or stay dry tomorrow, we tried a lot of different solutions, changed the balance of the bike and fitted a variety of different tyres."
Daje Shinya
) vado con piccola puglietta esplorativa non perchè non mi convinca il prono, ma perchè la quota è misera.
