Dani Pedrosa was the fastest rider today during the first round of free practice sessions at Motegi. Pedrosa was followed by his Repsol Honda teammates, Casey Stoner and Andrea Dovizioso.
Pedrosa took fourth in the morning free practice session, but was able to drop more than a second off of his time in the afternoon session, to claim the fastest lap of the day with a 1.46'79 time.
"We did a good job today; in the morning we took a good direction and this allowed us to improve a lot in the afternoon, by a second, and this is very important," Pedrosa said. "Tomorrow we have to focus on the set up of the bike; maybe the weather will change a little bit, so we have to be aware of the conditions and try to be fast anytime."
Stoner was just .05 seconds slower than his teammate.
"The bike felt pretty good this morning and then this afternoon we started the session on pretty much the same setting that we ended on this morning, it felt ok but we felt we could improve," Stoner said. "Unfortunately we went in slightly the wrong direction and couldn't get the bike to turn or hook up on the last two exits and then we didn't really have enough time to come in and make a change. We know what direction we want to go in now and hopefully tomorrow we can make the small improvements."
Behind the Repsol Honda trio came the San Carlos Gresini Honda of Marco Simoncelli. Jorge Lorenzo took fifth ahead of Nicky Hayden, Hiroshi Aoyoma, and Valentino Rossi.
