Pedrosa Struggles With Slippery Indy Surface

Henny Ray Abrams | August 26, 2011

INDIANAPOLIS, IN, AUG 26 –

Repsol Honda’s Dani Pedrosa joined the chorus of riders criticizing the paving of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway infield.The Spaniard was clearly not comfortable with the new pavement, which covers turns five through 16 of the 2.62-mile road course. The infield had been repaved to eliminate bumps, especially in a few critical areas that had claimed a number of riders in the past, including Pedrosa’s teammate Casey Stoner last year. But the new pavement was slippery and abrasive, though some hoped it would improve over the course of the weekend.

Asked by a local radio reporter what it felt like to ride on the “improved” course, the tenth fastest Pedrosa said, “It’s absolutely not improved. It’s very slippery. There is absolutely no grip. It was much, much better in the way before it was.”But, you know, it’s like it is now and there’s nothing to do. Just we have to try to set up the better we can the bike, because the grip is so poor you just can’t lean the bike in the corners and the tires looked destroyed this morning. We hope with a little more running, a little more rubber on the track, we can get a little better grip performance and tire wear, because at the moment it’s completely horrible.”Pedrosa said the grip didn’t improve from the first lap to the last, and he wasn’t among those who was confident it would get much better over the course of the weekend.”You know, bikes are not cars, so it’s quite complicated to clean the track by running in such a quick time,” he said. “But of course, it’s the race week, so there is nothing to do about it. We have to try to set up the bike in the way we can use it better and that’s it.”

 

Henny Ray Abrams | Contributing Editor

Abrams is the longest-serving contributor at Cycle News. Over the course of his 35-some years of writing and shooting photos, he’s covered events from MotoGP to the Motocross World Championship - and everything in between.