Dani Pedrosa, Repsol Honda: 4th – 1m 22.113s, said:
“I’We started this afternoon’s session really well and were able to lap consistently quickly straight away. Towards the end it became a little bit more difficult to improve the lap times because they tyres weren’t quite getting up to temperature and it was easy to make a mistake – we saw a few crashes out there later in the session. Fourth on the grid is not bad – I would have liked to be on the front row of course but fourth is ok. For tomorrow I’d like to improve our race pace by about three tenths per lap and that’s what we’ll work on in the warm-up. We did a lot of laps today on the tyres we’re planning to race on and this was one of our targets this weekend so I’m satisfied with that. It’s a short lap here and there isn’t any chance to rest which is going to make it a tough race tomorrow. You have to stay very focused and concentrated because it’s easy to make a mistake. In the sessions today I was mostly riding on a clear track, so I’m confident that if I can get away with the front group then this will help my rhythm and pace even more.”

Andrea Dovizioso, Repsol Honda: 5th – 1m 22.235s, said:
“As I expected this afternoon, with the higher temperatures and using the hard Bridgestones, I could improve my lap times by a decent amount over this morning. That’s good because these are the tyres we’ll use for the race and we’re in pretty good shape. I think I have a good race pace and starting from the second row is not bad. Towards the end of qualifying I think I could have gone even quicker with the last soft tyre but I was on track when Lorenzo crashed so I had to slow down because there were yellow flags. Anyway, I’m happy with qualifying and tomorrow we’ll aim to make a good start and stay with the leaders. In the heat of the race I think I should be able to grit my teeth and shave a few more tenths from my lap time too. This track is really special and the atmosphere here is unique, so and I’m really looking forward to tomorrow’s race. I hope we can be competitive and give the team a strong result before we head back to Europe.”

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