Saturday, 3rd May 2008

Repsol Honda riders Dani Pedrosa and Nicky Hayden will start Sunday's Chinese Grand Prix from fifth and tenth positions after a tough qualifying session in Shanghai.

"This afternoon the track felt a bit greasy, there were a lot of guys crashing. I've put myself in a nice hole starting tenth, I haven't qualified off the front two rows in the dry since Barcelona last year. I'm going to need an awesome start, try to pick a few guys off and move forward," he concluded.

"We were surprised that the bike-tyre combination didn't work as well as expected with the Hondas," admitted Jean-Philippe Weber, Michelin's director of motorcycle racing. "We didn't expect that and we will sit down to examine the reasons. Dani was very fast on race tyres though, so he has a good chance.

"The forecast suggests it will rain tomorrow. If the race is dry our race tyres are working very consistently and it's pretty clear what tyres our riders will use. We also expect a big fight because the lap times on race tyres are very close. The forecast says it will rain in the morning and then maybe not so much rain in the afternoon. We will see," he added.

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