February 5, 2015- SUZUKI MotoGP continued to make strong and positive progress in the second day of testing at Sepang International Circuit in Malaysia today as Aleix Espargaro and Maverick Vinales significantly improved their lap times.
Espargaro moved up into 10th position on the first two days of combined times with a lap of 2:01.344; which was just over 800ths-of-a-second quicker than Wednesday’s time of 2:02.225. Vinales made even greater improvements aboard his factory GSX-RR, lapping 1.24 seconds-faster and posting a time of 2:01.916 around the 5.543km circuit; placing him 15th overall in the rankings.
Today’s test was held in sunny conditions with air temperatures of 31.9C and track temperatures reaching 52.5C. Tomorrow, SUZUKI MotoGP will continue to evaluate the new settings on the GSX-RRs and plan a full-race simulation testing.
Davide Brivio – Team Manager: “We are quite happy today because we did a lot of work and achieved much progress, plus we are quite satisfied that both our riders managed so many laps. Aleix tried different types of settings and worked more on the electronics-settings while Maverick made a big improvement on his lap-times as he tried different riding styles and improved. It’s also important that we started to understand more about the bike now from the data we have acquired from our riders. There’s still a lot to do, of course, but it is positive so far for both as they are still continuing the learning-process. We are trying to optimise the package and find the strongest points to prepare for the season ahead.”
Aleix Espargaro: “I’m happy with the improvements made since yesterday as we closed half-a-second closer to the fast guys compared to the lap-times yesterday; which gives me great confidence that we are working in the right direction. We have a good set-up with the geometry of the bike and I’m getting more-used to being faster and more competitive with my new bike, so we are very happy and really looking forward tomorrow. We still need to work more with TC and rear-grip as these are the main issues right now, but I think that the time we did today was quite competitive.”
Maverick Vinales: “Today I attempted to try several different lines and also tried different riding styles to try to find which is the best and at the end of the session, I made a good lap, so I’m quite satisfied with the job done today. It’s rather important for me now to improve the lap times, and even step-by-step, I can feel that we are going in the right direction. I’m sure that I can improve a lot more if I have more laps and gain more experience; so I’m really keen to do as many laps as possible. We will try to make one long run tomorrow, but the primary plan is just like today; go step-by-step and target the best lap-time at the end of the day.”
SUZUKI MotoGP concludes its first test of 2015 tomorrow and will return to the Sepang International Circuit at the end of the month for a further four-days of testing in preparation for the opening round of the MotoGP World Championship at Losail, Qatar on March 29th.
Sepang Day 1 & 2 Combined Times: 1 Jorge Lorenzo (Yamaha) 1:59.963, 2 Andrea Dovizioso (Ducati) 2:00.015, 3 Marc Marquez (Honda) 2:00.146, 4 Dani Pedrosa (Honda) 2:00.260, 5 Valentino Rossi (Yamaha) 2:00.380, 6 Andrea Iannone (Ducati) 2:00.391. 10 Aleix Espargaro (SUZUKI MotoGP) 2:01.344. 15 Maverick Vinales (SUZUKI MotoGP) 2:01.916.
From:Team Suzuki News Service
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