Not wanting to sound sacrilegious, especially in a country like Italy where the Vatican rules, but MotoGP weekend’s need to be blessed. The weather is once again driving the riders crazy in finding set-ups in weird conditions, with no day or even session the same as the previous one; three riders are recovering from collarbone surgery, at least another four are recovering from aches, pains and various bruises and the only thing positive is that everyone more or less agrees that the new asphalt of the Mugello circuit is awesome and the Bridgestone tires are working well.

Here’s what all the riders had to say after one good session and a second which was a complete write-off:

Marco Simoncelli - 1st

“It has been a very positive day because we were fast from the start this morning. The bike is working well and I can’t wait to get back on it tomorrow. It is a shame about the conditions this afternoon because it was hard to tell if it was wet or dry and there was absolutely no point taking unnecessary risks. Hopefully it will be dry tomorrow because riding at Mugello on this new surface is a joy. The bike is set up virtually the same as Assen and I found a good feeling immediately. Obviously we have a little work to do on the electronics but in general I am happy.”

Casey Stoner - 2nd

“This morning we had a pretty tough session, my injuries from Assen aren’t completely healed and it seems there is a slightly deeper problem with my neck. On the main straights the wind was knocking my head around quite a lot and we struggled with this and weren’t able to get enough time on track to find something decent with set up or complete as many laps as I would have liked to. That said, in general the bike worked very well straight out of the box so I’m very grateful for this and cannot complain too much. There are a few things we would like to improve with how the bike turns, but we didn’t get any time on track this afternoon to try anything. At the beginning of FP2 it wasn’t wet enough for wet tyres, we would have destroyed them, then when it finally was dry there wasn’t enough time out there to do a lap or to get any information so it’s better we wait until tomorrow and continue from there”.

Andrea Dovizioso - 3rd

“I was curious to ride at Mugello with the new asphalt and I have to say that the expectations have been met. It’s great fun to ride here and the track is beautiful. The new tarmac is really smooth and some of the reference points we used to have are now gone and some lines have changed, so this morning we studied the track with fresh eyes. The feeling with the base of the machine is good, but we need to work because here with my riding style the front gets too hot so we need more laps to improve this situation. In the afternoon, light rain spoilt the session, nevertheless I’m happy with how easy I achieved the lap time of 1′49.272 on used tyres, one tenth from this morning’s lap time. We have started the race weekend at my home GP fast and competitive, I’m happy”.

Jorge Lorenzo - 4th

“In the afternoon the track was not perfect so we decided to stay in the garage. I am feeling confident because I like Mugello; I feel very comfortable riding on the new asphalt and this morning everything was good; all of us in the team have done a fantastic job so far. In my opinion we are now the closest we have been this season to the competition. Even with that, to win here will be tough, but we can! It is still too soon to say, but we have improved.”

Ben Spies - 5th

“This afternoon became one of those sessions we’ve had all year, rain came and so you don’t want to take any risks. With the conditions the way they were we didn’t want to risk the bike or me so we just went out on the last lap to do a couple of practice starts. The morning session was good; the bike is working really well. We tried some different tyre combinations and I think we can make the bike even better. I think we have the pace to battle for top five and contend for the podium so that’s our goal.”

Colin Edwards - 6th

“This morning was great and the new surface here is phenomenal. They’ve done an unbelievable job because the grip is awesome and all the bumps that really upset the bike have all gone too. We know the spring rates on the suspension we normally need to use for this track but we’ve got to go harder for tomorrow because I’ve got so much traction the bike is set too soft and its sitting down in the middle of the corner. The only problem I had again today was my ribs that are still causing me a lot of pain after the crash in Catalunya. With the few days rest after Assen I was starting to think the muscle damage was on the mend and I could at least sneeze without bursting into tears with the pain. But this morning I felt back to square one and to be honest this afternoon wasn’t great for the TV or for the fans, but that rest will probably help me out for the rest of the weekend.”

Dani Pedrosa - 7th

“It’s good to be back on the bike again and regain some feeling. I have pain, of course, especially in hard braking and in the right hand corners is where I suffer more, but it’s normal. Considering that it’s been one month and a half without touching the bike, I did not do so bad this morning. I know that the race is going to be very tough and it will hurt because there are 23 laps and this circuit is physically very demanding, with constant changes of direction, but we have the whole day tomorrow to work and I hope I can get a more or less good grid position in qualifying. The pain will increase with the effort, but I will try to prepare myself between practices with some treatment, have a good rest and make the most of the laps I can do tomorrow, I remain positive. I was lucky this afternoon with the drops of rain as it meant I could rest a little more. I know tomorrow will be tougher because everybody will improve their lap times and I will need to make a bigger effort”.

Nicky Hayden - 8th

We were pretty strong in our first run this morning. We didn’t improve much from there, but I used the same hard tyre the whole session, and it worked well here on both sides. We made a couple little changes with the bike that felt like they were in a good direction. I did my fastest lap on the step 1 chassis, but the data showed that the step 2 had some pluses. This afternoon was wet one minute and dry the next. It looked like guys were destroying their wet tyres quick, and there was no point in putting on engine mileage and taking risks. We just went out to check a power setting on a practice start. We’ll see what tomorrow brings.”

Hiroshi Aoyama - 9th

“Little by little this morning I rediscovered my feeling for my own bike after riding the factory Repsol Honda RC212V at Assen and by the end I had my confidence back. Unfortunately the conditions this afternoon were not good and we didn’t get enough laps in to fully evaluate my physical condition after the crash at Assen. I hope we can ride in the dry tomorrow.”

Álvaro Bautista - 10th

“It was a bit like my first time at a MotoGP at Mugello here today because I could not ride like I wanted to last year as I was still recovering from the injury to my shoulder. This morning I felt quite good on the bike and I think the track is much better now as well! It is a lot flatter and most of the bumps have gone, the grip is still as good, but without the bumps it makes it more fun to ride. We tried to get a better feeling in the front this morning because I didn’t quite have the stability I wanted in the corners and for this afternoon we wanted to try something else, but that was impossible because of the rain. I did a couple of laps in the afternoon session, but it was very difficult out there, because the track was not completely dry. We will have to work hard tomorrow morning to get the best setting for Sunday’s race, but I’m sure we can do a decent job here.”

Cal Crutchlow - 11th

“Without doubt, this is the most difficult track I’ve had to learn so far this year, but I think 11th position is still a good result and I think with a few more laps under my belt I’d have been into the top ten. The track is so technical and there is a lot of undulation, a lot of blind corner entries and you can’t see the exit of the fast chicanes. So it is a difficult track to go fast on and it is also a very physically demanding track, though the left collarbone I broke at Silverstone isn’t too uncomfortable. I’m just upset because I’ve lost another session because of the rain and that is the last thing I need when I’m trying to learn the track and set some competitive times. When you miss a session it makes the rest of the weekend difficult, but I’ll do my best to get a good grid position in qualifying tomorrow. I’m also looking to improve the front-end feeling tomorrow. The front this morning was too vague and we had some ideas to improve it this afternoon but the weather was no good.”

Randy de Puniet - 12th

Today could have gone better; it’s a shame that once again the weather has affected the bike setup. This morning wasn’t bad, but I obviously can’t compare the bike from the first session to that of the afternoon. I need more time to understand which are the right choices to make.”

Valentino Rossi - 13th

“It’s almost as if we didn’t have practice today. This morning we only had one complete outing, which went pretty well. Then we had problems with both of the bikes, and I was left with the time that I did on my fourth lap. They were really just minor problems, but the fact is that we didn’t ride anymore after the early minutes: on the first bike, a wire touched a hot part and the bike stopped. On the other bike, there was a separate electrical problem, and the result was the same. The afternoon session was halfway between wet and dry, so it was useless. Only in the final minutes were we able to do three laps to check some changes we had made, and the results seemed interesting. We hope we can try them more thoroughly tomorrow to see how competitive we are in normal conditions. Having tested the GP12 here gives us a starting point, but we still have to adapt the 800’s setup, as it requires different lines in order to maintain corner speed. Tomorrow we’ll continue to test, and we hope to get close to the others.”

Hector Barbera - 14th

“This morning’s session was quite positive. The objective was to compare the setting we have used over the past two races to what we used at the preseason tests in Malaysia and in the end we went for a lower ride height, which is what we had in the winter. Now we will focus on working with this set-up and completing a lot of laps to get a consistent rhythm without changing things. Maybe we have tried to be too precise with the set-up in recent races and it has put us off. The important thing is that we are more clear, we are back on the right path and little by little we will improve from here. We didn’t get to test anything this afternoon so hopefully we can have sunshine and more productivity tomorrow.”

Toni Elias - 15th

Well… this is like a “fake session” because the track conditions were weird: not enough wet for wet tyres and too humid for slick tyres. At the end the majority of my colleagues have preferred to sit out the session because it was too risky. I made the same in the first part of the practice but then we have decided to go out for a couple of laps as the asphalt was drying up. Our lap time was pretty good but we could not proceed with our TO DO list in the dry. We’ll see what we can do tomorrow to increase our pace: it depends on the weather again”.

Karel Abraham - 16th

“Today’s sessions weren’t very good, especially during the afternoon. In the morning session we had problems with the front end which was very unstable. Those riders, who went on the track early, completed some laps, but I spent only a few minutes on the track. It’s a shame because we wanted to try some changes on the set-up.

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