Jerez race winner Dani Pedrosa will start Sunday afternoon's French GP from 13th place on the grid, despite being quite fast during the course of the day.
After solving some setup issues in the morning's damp-but-drying FP3 session, preventing him from gaining direct passage into Q2, Dani was very fast in FP4, ending a close second.
He was able to keep up his speed in QP1 but ultimately lost his provisional second place to Johann Zarco by just 48 thousandths of a second. He therefore had to settle for a fifth-row spot despite the fact that his QP1 lap time would have placed him on the second row.
“This weekend has been quite difficult in general, due to the weather that had us struggling with the tyre temperature,” the Repsol Honda rider explained. “Then this morning during FP3 we had some little problems with the bike that meant I couldn't improve my lap time and go directly to Q2.”
‘The FP4 session went quite well; we proved to have a good pace and that's the positive part of today. It was the same way in Q1; we were fast but unfortunately just not enough to move through. Anyway, we must now think about tomorrow. We must be very focused on the start and in the first chicane, and we also must try and be quite aggressive in the first laps to recover positions. We'll try our best and see where we end up.”
