Jerez : Qualifying – Repsol Honda
In the first qualifying session of the 2006 MotoGP season, Repsol Honda riders Nicky Hayden and Dani Pedrosa narrowly missed out on a front row start for tomorrow`s race here in Jerez, southern Spain. After the eventful hour-long session, they finished in fourth and fifth places, separated by just 0.068 of a second, putting them in a strong position on the second row.

In a dramatic start to the season, qualifying was halted by the red flag after only three minutes when a bike spilled fluid onto the track causing five following bikes to go down. Luckily the Repsol Honda riders were unaffected, although Nicky Hayden did have a slide, and they were able to return to the pits as the track was closed for twenty minutes to allow the surface to be cleaned.

At the restart the job of chipping away at times began. The Repsol Honda Team`s new signing, 20-year-old Dani Pedrosa, held second place for the first thirty minutes before times started to fall at the end of the session. Having moved up to MotoGP from the 250cc class this year, the young Spaniard is still learning how to best use the sticky Michelin qualifying tyres, yet he still impressed his home crowd.

Twenty-four-year-old American, Nicky Hayden, built up speed through the session, making adjustments to his RC211V to best suit the Michelin qualifiers. He also briefly held second position towards the end, but slipped to fourth in the final few minutes, one place off the front row.

Following a 20-minute warm-up session tomorrow morning, the first race of the MotoGP season begins here at the 4.42km (2.75 mile) Jerez circuit at 2pm, local time.

Nicky Hayden (1m 39.666s - Grid position: 4th)
"It would have been nice to be on the front row – I mean Capirossi put down a smoking lap. The Michelin qualifying tyres worked pretty good today - it`s been a while since I rode on real qualifying tyres and they`re fun. Some of our problems were cured with qualifiers so I`m not thrilled with fourth but it`s respectable and it gives us a chance. The session was strange with the stop for oil at the start.
We tried some stuff early in the session but I didn`t have as good a feeling as we did in the morning so we went back little-by-little to what we had. Tomorrow`s race day and we`ve got our horse and we`re going to show up and ride it as hard as we can. In the morning warm-up we`re going to try some things to get the bike turning a little bit better and to get the tyres to last a bit longer, and to see if I can make some progress at my end. I`ll need a good start. This Jerez crowd is unbelievable – tomorrow`s going to be fun and I`m ready."

Dani Pedrosa (1m 39.734s - Grid position: 5th)
"This session was difficult because riding on qualifying tyres is not so easy and you have to plan very well in terms of riding the lap and with the set up of the machine. We made some mistakes with the planning, and yet I think my position is good. I`m not yet at 100 per cent – I`m still very inexperienced and still have to learn step-by-step but for the first qualifying session I think the position is very good and I`m happy with it. My feeling for the race set-up is quite good because we tested here two weeks ago and this gave us a good basic set-up. I`m looking forward to finally going racing because that is when we will see the real level. I will hope the Spanish fans enjoy the race!"

Makoto Tanaka - Repsol Honda Team Manager : "Both our riders worked very hard today. I`m not totally happy because we`re not on the front row. We got the top two times of the Michelin runners but Nicky still has to do some work to fix the chassis balance. We will confirm the final set-up in the warm-up session tomorrow. Dani couldn`t fully show what he`s capable of because he`s still learning how to ride on MotoGP qualifying tyres. I hope both riders will get a good start and I`m looking forward to seeing both of them on the podium!"

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