honda pair return to the scene of the crime
12/09/07
News
Repsol Honda duo Nicky Hayden and Dani Pedrosa will re-visit the scene of last year's coming together at Estoril this weekend, when a mistake by the Spaniard took both riders out and nearly wrecked the American's title chances.
Although the team say the incident is "long forgotten", it cannot be far from either riders' mind, especially as Randy De Puniet did a number on them both last time out on the first lap at Misano. But Hayden is fairly pragmatic about the whole thing.
I" smile when I think about last year, I saw my dream of winning the crown slipping away from me in the crash. So it will be pleasant to make up for that this weekend. I have been suffering a lot this season and we have had bad luck too," he said.
And we have also made mistakes, so I am dying to get to Estoril and try to make everything work well. The weather is always unpredictable, which makes tyre selection on the Thursday really critical. I think that Michelin tyres function according to the weather conditions and we need to work on that to improve them.
"It would be good to find a good set up by the Friday morning and then just have to fine tune. Although if we have seen one thing this year it is that our bike needs a certain amount of time to get the right set up. My mechanics are doing a good job and we have made some progress in the last few races. I am not under the same pressure as last year, so I will try to have fun and see what we can do on the Sunday.”
The Portugese track isn't a favourite of Pedrosa's and he has never managed to win there, but he remains upbeat about the weekend and is concentrating on beating Rossi for second place in the championship.
"My results at this circuit have not been my best, but I got pole twice and I think that we can be competitive if we get a good set up this weekend," said the diminutive Spaniard.
" The tyres will be very important again and the weather can play a crucial role too. It rains quite often there, but we have already seen a lot of water this season so I hope that it does not rain this weekend in Portugal. Obviously the memory from last year`s race is not so good, but we have got over that and we are going to tackle the race this weekend with normality. The objective is to continue getting close to the second place in the championship.”
