It was a case of a job half done for the MotoGP teams at Sepang today, as a dry opening free practice session was followed by a lunchtime thunderstorm that made for virtually impossible conditions in the afternoon. With huge damp patches in some areas as the rest of the asphalt dried there was little point in exiting pit lane for the second session and only thirteen riders did so, meaning the lap times from this morning remained as the fastest of the day – Dani Pedrosa topping the overnight timesheets from Casey Stoner and Jorge Lorenzo with Randy De Puniet and Aleix Espargaró again the men to beat in CRT.
Just 0.048 seconds separate the POWER ELECTRONICS Aspar pair, De Puniet lapping thirteenth fastest and Espargaró fourteenth. The Frenchman and the Spaniard were amongst the few riders to brave the mixed conditions the afternoon, hoping to gather data that could prove crucial should the weather deal a similar hand on Sunday.
13th Randy De Puniet 2.05.029 (26 laps): “We started out this morning with our usual base setting. We had some problems at Motegi so today we tried to get back on the course we were on beforehand. My feeling with the bike was good but the problem is that it uses up the tyres very quickly. We spent most of the day working with used tyres and trying to adapt the electronics to get the best out of them. Overall it has been a positive day even though the afternoon session was a washout.”
14th Aleix Espargaró 2.05.077 (22 laps): “We had a lot of work to get through this morning. At the start of the session we were getting a lot of vibration from the front end, which could have been down to the fact that the track is often dirty here on the first day. I could see from the television that I wasn't the only rider to struggle with it. Even so we set a decent lap time, virtually the same as Randy, and then in the afternoon we couldn't really improve on it because of the weather. We did a short run on wet tyres just to try and get some data in case it rains again for the race on Sunday. Overall I am quite satisfied with the first day here and I hope we can continue making improvements tomorrow.”
Power Electronics Aspar Press Release
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