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Dani Pedrosa plays down German MotoGP practice form

Dani Pedrosa refused to get carried away with his practice form ahead of the German Grand Prix, saying that he and Honda still needed to improve before qualifying

Pedrosa went fastest in both MotoGP Friday practice sessions at the Sachsenring, a circuit at which he has won the past two grands prix.

The Spaniard, yet to win in 2012, said he could not afford to relax despite his pace in both the dry and wet on the opening day.

"The weekend has started pretty good for us; I felt comfortable in both the dry and wet conditions, but we cannot relax," Pedrosa said.

"The times are very close here, as usual, and we still have margin to improve."

Pedrosa admitted the afternoon rain had interrupted Honda's practice programme, but said it could also prove useful given the unstable conditions forecast for the remainder of the weekend.

"We only managed half of our plan today," he admitted. "We wanted to test the hard rear tyres in the afternoon, because in theory the hardest compound should be working better in this track where you are leaning to the left a long time, and with the soft the bike slides a lot.

"Anyway, it's been also good to try the bike in the wet for one practice session because it looks like the weather will again be very unstable.

"Today I've been using the new chassis we received in Assen and the feeling was OK, but weather permitting, I would like to compare both chassis again tomorrow before qualifying."

Team-mate Casey Stoner meanwhile said he was happy with his pace in the both wet and dry conditions, but did highlight an issue with rear chatter.

"We were pretty happy in both conditions today. In the dry we felt comfortable and we had a consistently higher pace than the others, and we're confident we can go quite a bit faster," he said.

"We were struggling a little at the beginning in the wet, we needed to find more rear traction but the conditions weren't perfect as they were changing throughout the session with some parts of the track drying out and then more rain arriving.

"Unfortunately we have some bad chatter in the rear, especially on the right hand corners, both in the wet and dry so we need to improve this before the race."

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