Dani Pedrosa maintained his unbeaten record in pre-season testing this winter after leading day one of the second test at Sepang. The Repsol Honda rider continued to have the edge on Jorge Lorenzo on Tuesday morning although the reigning champion was unable to respond due to a heavy rain storm in the afternoon.
Valentino Rossi was among the first riders out on track this morning on the second factory Yamaha but he would soon give best to his teammate when he got up to speed. The pair Repsol Hondas also edged in front of Rossi with the Italian unable to break into the 2m01s bracket.
Pedrosa got all the way down to a 2:01.580 before lunchtime but ominously for the rest, Dani managed three other separate laps which would have all seen him top the timesheets. Lorenzo’s best effort was a quarter of a second slower with Marc Marquez a tenth further back in third. Stefan Bradl all but matched his old Moto2 rival in fourth with a 2:01.959 as Valentino Rossi tumbled to fifth with a technical problem forcing him to complete the day on the 2012 YZR-M1.
Cal Crutchlow’s consistent run on the Tech 3 Yamaha continued in sixth with Alvaro Bautista close behind but one of the stories of the day had to be the improvement of the Ducatis. While they’re far from where they hoped to be, Andrea Dovizioso brought the Bologna squad’s GP13 to within 1.221s of the ultimate pace, almost halving the deficit from the end of the previous test. Nicky Hayden backed up his teammate in ninth with Bradley Smith demoted to tenth on the second satellite Yamaha.
Ducati’s mood will have been dampened slightly by the sight of Aleix Espargaro’s Aspar CRT machine outpacing the Pramac GP13s of Ben Spies and Andrea Iannone, the pair unable to break out of the 2:04s. The most frustrated man of all today will surely have been Michael Laverty though who was forced to wait while his Paul Bird Motorsport crew finished building the new PBM chassis.
| Official MotoGP Test – Sepang (Tuesday 26th February) | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pos | Rider | Nat | Team | Time | Laps | |
| 1 | 26. Dani Pedrosa |  |
Repsol Honda Team | 2:01.580 | 43 | Report |
| 2 | 99. Jorge Lorenzo | |
Yamaha Factory Racing | 2:01.815 | 25 | Report |
| 3 | 93. Marc Marquez | |
Repsol Honda Team | 2:01.942 | 23 | Report |
| 4 | 6. Stefan Bradl |  |
LCR Honda MotoGP | 2:01.959 | 38 | |
| 5 | 46. Valentino Rossi |  |
Yamaha Factory Racing | 2:02.028 | 25 | Report |
| 6 | 35. Cal Crutchlow |  |
Monster Yamaha Tech 3 | 2:02.272 | 28 | Report |
| 7 | 19. Alvaro Bautista | |
Go & Fun Honda Gresini | 2:02.362 | 32 | |
| 8 | 04. Andrea Dovizioso | |
Ducati Team | 2:02.801 | 22 | Report |
| 9 | 69. Nicky Hayden |  |
Ducati Team | 2:03.143 | 46 | Report |
| 10 | 38. Bradley Smith | |
Monster Yamaha Tech 3 | 2:03.632 | 24 | Report |
| 11 | T2. Katsuyuki Nakasuga |  |
Yamaha Factory Racing | 2:03.734 | 24 | |
| 12 | 41. Aleix Espargaro | |
Power Electronics Aspar | 2:03.941 | 28 | |
| 13 | 11. Ben Spies | |
Ignite Pramac Racing | 2:04.047 | 25 | |
| 14 | 29. Andrea Iannone | |
Energy T.I. Pramac Racing | 2:04.050 | 32 | |
| 15 | T1. Wataru Yoshikawa | |
Yamaha Factory Racing | 2:04.590 | 23 | |
| 16 | 51. Michele Pirro | |
Ducati Test Team | 2:04.626 | 38 | |
| 17 | 7. Hiroshi Aoyama | |
Avintia Blusens | 2:04.743 | 30 | |
| 18 | 14. Randy de Puniet |  |
Power Electronics Aspar | 2:05.288 | 22 | |
| 19 | 37. Takumi Takahashi | |
HRC Test Team | 2:05.510 | 34 | |
| 20 | 5. Colin Edwards | |
NGM Mobile Forward Racing | 2:05.518 | 21 | |
| 21 | 9. Danilo Petrucci | |
Came IodaRacing Project | 2:05.827 | 35 | |
| 22 | 17. Karel Abraham |  |
Cardion AB Motoracing | 2:05.838 | 26 | |
| 23 | 68. Yonny Hernandez |  |
Paul Bird Motorsport | 2:05.908 | 29 | |
| 24 | 8. Hector Barbera | |
Avintia Blusens | 2:06.062 | 30 | |
| 25 | 71. Claudio Corti | |
NGM Mobile Forward Racing | 2:06.306 | 26 | |
| 26 | 67. Bryan Staring |  |
Go & Fun Honda Gresini | 2:06.730 | 34 | |
| 27 | 52. Lukas Pesek | |
Came Ioda Racing Project | 2:07.991 | 25 | |
| 28 | 33. Michael Laverty | |
Paul Bird Motorsport | No Time | 0 | |
