Today marked the beginning of the second winter MotoGP test at Malaysia’s Sepang Circuit, where the work will continue until February 24. The Ducati Marlboro Team riders took full advantage of an entire day without rain, although the temperatures were higher than they had been during the three-day test at the beginning of this month.
Valentino Rossi continued his important work on the GP11’s setup, completing 53 laps and choosing some base settings on which his crew plans to concentrate in the future.
Nicky Hayden worked on his setup in an effort to reduce chatter, and despite a slow fall just before the lunch break, he was satisfied in the end with the progress he’d made.
Valentino Rossi (Ducati Marlboro Team) 9th, 2:01.999 (53 laps)
“We can be satisfied with today as a first day, because we’re a second from the top, like we were at the end of the first test but without trying a late ‘time attack’ with the soft tyre like the others did. For the most part today, I was between fifth and sixth place, which is the goal we had set. I’m still losing about three tenths due to the shoulder, because I’m still stronger in the left turns, whereas I’m normally the opposite; the rest we’ll have to find by working on the bike. I’m also happy because we spent all our time on the hard tyres, which we struggled with before today. In the end, we chose one of the two setups that we had settled upon at the last test, and that will now be our base to work from, and the one on which we’ll concentrate our efforts in the next couple of days.”
Nicky Hayden (Ducati Marlboro Team) 12th, 2:02.680 (60 laps)
“It’s good to be back at Sepang, working on and developing the GP11. We spent the morning checking a few things and confirming what we had learned the last time we were here. Everything pretty much went according to schedule, except I had a little crash in Turn 1 toward the end of the morning session. It was really hot, and I lost the front and tipped over, but I was going slow and didn’t do any damage to myself or the bike. Today we experienced less chatter than we had last time, so that’s quite good. We need to keep reducing that over the next two days and also find some more traction, so we’ve got plenty to keep us busy.”
