The factory Yamaha pairing of Ben Spies and Jorge Lorenzo managed to squeeze in between the Repsol Honda squad on the timesheet at the end of Day 1 of the final pre season test in Qatar, ahead of next weekends season opener. The pairing placed 4th and 5th respectively after using the day to work on setups for next week.
Speaking after the session, Spies was upbeat. “We made the bike go in a pretty good direction today and hopefully we can get a little bit more out of it. We want to try another tyre tomorrow that we haven’t used yet, all in all it’s been a good first session. The bike seems to be closer to the front than Malaysia and I’ve got pretty good expectations after the first day. The track is a lot more flowing here which suits our bike well; I think this should be a good track for us.”
Lorenzo was also in a positive mood. “We tried a few different things on some corners today to try to make the bike more stable when I open the throttle; in almost all the gears we have done a good job. It seems we are closer to the Honda guys than in Sepang so I’m happy. We are going to continue and try a few different things tomorrow to try and find some more grip as well.”
