Repsol Honda set for Chinese challenge

From Repsol Honda

Repsol Honda RC212V riders Dani Pedrosa and Nicky Hayden travel to China for next weekend's MotoGP aiming to build on the good work undertaken at the first three races of the 2008 MotoGP World Championship.

Pedrosa, who holds equal first place in the points chase, will be aiming to repeat his 2006 Shanghai victory, his first success in the MotoGP class, to boost his 2008 title challenge. Hayden has had a tougher start to the season but shows every sign of challenging up front. At Jerez he rode to a close fourth-place result and at Estoril he was chasing a podium finish when he slid off.

Shanghai was built to host its first Formula 1 car Grand Prix in 2005 and staged its first MotoGP event the same year. It is an unusual circuit, the layout inspired by the Chinese character ‘shang’, meaning ‘above’, which is the origin of the historic port’s name, Shanghai meaning ‘above the ocean’.

The track is most notable for featuring MotoGP’s longest and fastest straight (the back straight which measures 1.202km-0.747 miles) and its longest corner (the turn 1/2 right-hander which takes riders through 300 degrees). Pedrosa and Hayden enjoyed their best weekend at the track with a superb one-two finish at the 2006 Chinese GP.

“It seems like we’re making progress," Hayden said. "Honda’s working hard, the Michelin tires are working good and I really enjoyed the bike at Estoril. We were up there all weekend, so we’ve just got to put the crash behind us and move on.

"Shanghai is a strange track. My favourite thing is the surface, seems like it’s always good and consistent. The track has got two big straightaways, the back straightaway is the highest top speed of the year and right after you’ve got one of the slowest corners in MotoGP, so it’s really important to be stable on the brakes, so we worked on that during our tests at Estoril. You also need something good on horsepower, something you can do some drafting with.

"The facilities are amazing, it’s probably the most over-the-top facility I’ve seen in my life. Saying that, Indy is pretty spectacular too.”