New clutch boost for Andrea Dovizioso

Andrea Dovizioso has hailed a new clutch tested in Estoril earlier this week as Honda continues a long-running battle to cure a corner entry stability issue with its factory RC212V machine.

Although Dani Pedrosa and Casey Stoner felt the new clutch did little to alleviate a hopping issue from the rear tyre on corner entry, Italian Dovizioso was impressed when he tested the new system in Estoril earlier this week.

The former 125GP world champion was only eighth quickest at the one-day test in Portugal but he said: “I’m really happy because we tried a new clutch and it worked really good. We have less hopping and this is very important because this is one of our big problems.”

“With this new clutch we can brake harder because we have more stability. I tried two different set-ups and both worked better for the stability on the brakes. I think we are really close to being okay, but sure we can improve a little bit. We’re still not perfect on stability but we are really close and compared to last year we’ve made a big step.”

Dovizioso ended the test with a best time of 1.37.460, which was well over a second slower than Marco Simoncelli’s best pace of 1.36.211.

He said he could have lapped faster had he not encountered a chatter issue while getting in development miles on two new Bridgestone rear tyres designed for the 2012 1000cc four-stroke class.

The Repsol Honda rider added: “The gap to the fastest rider is big but it is a little bit strange because Bridgestone bring two new tyres for 2012 and when I put that tyre on, the grip was much better but I had some chatter on the front and I couldn’t improve enough to set a good lap time.”

“Apart from that, when everybody used the same tyre from the race, I was only 0.4s from the fastest, so I think we can be really positive about Le Mans. It looks like the casing of the new tyre is softer so it squats more at the rear and take more weight off the front, so this could be the reason for the chatter.”