The final day of post-season MotoGP tests at Valencia took place today and after the threat of showers this morning the clouds held off to allow for a productive outing from the time the track opened at 10am until its closure at 5pm. Marc Márquez was again the fastest rider on track, closing in on his pole time from Saturday with a lap of 1'30.287 compared to his record of 1'30.237. The teams and riders now take a well earned break before the 2014 preseason gets underway on the 4th February at Sepang, Malaysia.
After Hiroshi Aoyama spent the first day on track with the Aspar Team's Honda Production Racer, yesterday was the turn of his new team-mate Nicky Hayden and today both the Japanese and the American completed laps on the Honda RCV-1000R. Hayden rode until around 2:15pm whilst Aoyama stayed out until the track closed, both riders improving their lap times and their feel for the bike as they continued to build relationships with their respective crews.
Nicky Hayden
“We only spent half a day on track today, which was the plan, but we made the most of the time available and took some positive steps from yesterday. We improved the lap time and I felt more comfortable on the bike but like I said yesterday this is still a very new project and we have a lot of work to do, in particular with the electronics. If we can learn how to get the best out of this area we will improve a lot further. We have gathered a lot of data over the past couple of days and we have some ideas where to go from here. It was important for me to have this opportunity to get to know the team and I leave here in positive mood.”
Hiroshi Aoyama
“It has been a positive second day because we have made improvements, although we spent a lot of time this afternoon in the pit box working on the electronics. Our feeling after two days with this bike is positive but we clearly have a lot of work ahead. We need more time to get to know the bike and to set it up, especially in terms of the electronics but we have a two month break now until the next test and this will give the engineers an important opportunity to continue developing the bike.”
Power Electronics Aspar Press Release
