During Catalunya testsRepsol Honda riders Dani Pedrosa and Nicky Hayden commenced a two-day test session at Catalunya yesterday afternoon, but Sunday's race-winner Pedrosa ended the day in hospital after a heavy tumble at the one/turn two chicane.
Both riders had
planned to spend the day doing back-to-back tests with the RC212V spring-valve and pneumatic-valve engines.
Pedrosa started with the conventional engine (best lap time: 1m 43.48s), then switched to the pneumatic-valve unit, but that outing (best lap time: 1m 43.81s) was cut short by a minor electrical problem, so the Spaniard swapped machines again.
It was during this outing that Pedrosa suffered a highside tumble, landing heavily on his back. He was taken to Barcelona's Dexeus hospital where x-rays confirmed that he has no broken bones, but he has bruised his back and will need 48 hours of rest and anti-inflammatory medication. Pedrosa will not test tomorrow.
Hayden meanwhile evaluated both engines. The American was happy with the pneumatic-valve engine's top speed and rideability and spent most of his time working on set-up with that engine. Tuesday he will focus on race-distance tyre testing with the same engine.
Nicky Hayden
"It went smooth today. We tried the new bike, my feeling with it was good, it had some good points. But we need more time to check the bike in a long distance situation.
We tried some general setting things with it, and we only using race tyres, seeing what kind of endurance we could get because we had some problems with set-up during the weekend wearing the tyres more than we liked. We'll run with it more tomorrow and maybe try a new chassis."
Dani Pedrosa
"The crash happened while I was changing direction in the first chicane. It was a highside and I fell quite heavily. My back and my shoulders hurt. I crashed at the start of my second lap of that run, maybe because the tyres weren't fully up to temperature. When I fell I was doing some tyre testing with the standard engine. I only did ten laps with the pneumatic-valve engine so it's still too early to give any comments."
Repsol Honda
