Gresini Honda riders Alex De Angelis and Shinya Nakano spent the first part of the day adapting the base set up of their RC212V’s to suit the 2008 chassis. Once the riders had gained confidence in the set up the team moved on to testing rear suspension link set up in a bid to improve grip and stability while testing a range of Bridgestone tyres.
De Angelis on his first visit to Sepang on the Honda RCV set impressive lap times managing to set his fastest lap of the day on a tyre that had run 16 laps. Team mate Nakano quickly found a base set up for the new for 2008 chassis and set to work on the suspension link system and testing tyres for Bridgestone.
Shinya Nakano, Gresini Honda: 2m 02.622s – 69 laps. We started with the new chassis and found some good points the only real difficulty I had was on corner entry I couldn’t hold my line in some corners a little bit the same as last year but Bridgestone found me a good front race tyre and it improved my feeling with the bike and I set the same lap time as I did the last time we were at Sepang.”
Alex De Angelis, Gresini Honda: 2m 03.301s – 47 laps. “Today was the first time I have ridden the RCV as I was not at the November test. I felt today was good because I didn’t have to change much on the new chassis set up. I didn’t try to change anything until I set a god lap time then we started to try out little front end chatter but it was much less than the last test at Jerez. The Bridgestone tyres worked really good today. I did a 20 plus lap run and set fastest lap on lap 16 so that was very positive.”
