Jorge Lorenzo and Ben Spies have completed the 2nd test in Malaysia with race simulations, on a day where the usual Sepang weather reared its head. Lorenzo’s 20 lap race run took place under dark skies, with the occasional fork of lightning. The Spaniard confirmed that the factory M1 development is going in the right direction, by lapping consistently, and over 0.5s ahead of last years pole time, and left him 7th on the timesheets.
“I feel quite tired, after two and a half days of testing I’ve finished with a long 20 lap run.” said Lorenzo.
“The results have been quite good, we had a very consistent pace and I was happy to have improved some things with the bike. I think we’ve made some big steps forward with traction and feel, although we still need to improve our lap time.” he finished.
For Spies, he completed his schedule in the morning session, with a 32 Lap run, despite the Texan having 2 sets of soft tyres left, he decided to call it a day as conditions weren’t ideal for setting a fast lap time. Before the session was over, he had set a time 0.86s faster than Jorge’s pole time last year, and ended up 5th on the timesheet.
“It was a productive test, we got through a lot.” said Spies.
“I had one small mistake but on the plus side we had a lot of stuff we accomplished so it’s all good. We still have some work to do obviously but we’re not too far off race pace. We need to figure out how to get the bike a little bit quicker for a few laps, definitely for qualifying and the beginning of the race. It wasn’t the most ideal conditions today for a quick lap, I did go to put in a few this morning and was pretty pleased with the time. I’m looking forward to a few days rest now in cooler temperatures at home before Qatar! The team have been awesome again, I’m really pleased with how we’re working together.”
