Valentino Rossi rounded off a successful three days in Malaysia with another impressive day's testing at the Sepang International Circuit today. The high point of the Italian's day was his race simulation, when he lapped consistently under lap record pace and improved on his time from the January test, as well as on last year's race time.
Rossi was pleased both with the performance of his 2008-spec M1 and with his Bridgestone tyres, today's results indicating that he and his team are on target with their pre-season development. His best time of 2'01.190 was set on a qualifying tyre on his 23rd of 48 laps, putting him second in the standings behind team-mate Jorge Lorenzo, who topped the time sheets today with an impressive time of 2'00.705.
The Fiat Yamaha Team will reconvene closer to home at Jerez in Spain on Saturday, 16th February for the three-day Official MotoGP Test, the penultimate test before the season kicks off in March.
Valentino Rossi
Position: 2nd
Time: 2'01.190
Laps: 48
"I'm really happy about today's race simulation and about the overall balance of this test. Everything has gone well and the race-simulation was an improvement on the one from last time; this is the real test of where we are. We've worked on various different items in many different areas but we've had positive feedback throughout. It's given me the chance to better understand the tyres and today's simulation has given me even more information about how they behave. We've worked more at this test on the set-up of the bike to enable it to work as well as possible with the new tyres and we've also continued to work on the new engine, which will be the standard one for this season, and on the electronics. We've still got a lot to do but so far everything is progressing well. Now we're looking forward to Jerez and seeing where we are at a new track alongside all of our competitors."
Cavide Brivio - Team Manager "This test has been very positive; all the hard work that the Yamaha engineers have put in over the winter is now showing in our good results so I would like to say a big thank you to all of them. We've seen improvement in all the different areas in which we've worked in this week and so we hope that these results will help us to create a competitive package. Today's race simulation was good and an improvement on January, plus the individual lap times within it were fast and consistent. This is a very important indication of our level. We've only done 50% of our pre-season testing, we have two more to go before the first race but we hope to continue improving like this and arrive at the first race in good shape and ready to commence our challenge."
Ambient temperature: 39°
Track temperature: 57°
Humidity: 53%
Test Times: 1. Jorge Lorenzo (SPA) Fiat Yamaha Team 2'00.705
2. Valentino Rossi (ITA) Fiat Yamaha Team 2'01.190
3. Shinya Nakano (JPN) Honda Gresini 2'02.135
4. Alex De Angelis (RSM) Honda Gresini 2'02.194
5. Olivier Jacque (FRA) Kawasaki Racing 2'03.021
6. Tamaki Serizawa (JPN) Kawasaki Racing 2'03.623
7. Yamaha Test Rider (-) Yamaha Test Team 2'06.000
8. Yamaha Test Rider (-) Yamaha Test Team 2'06.040
Sepang Lap Record: Casey Stoner (Ducati) 2007, 2'02.108
Sepang Best Lap: V. Rossi (Yamaha) 2006, 2'00.605
