MotoGP - Sepang2 Test 1 Times
 

Final day times from the 2nd Official MotoGP Test Session at Sepang, Malaysia, 28th Feb 2012

Pos Rider Team Fastest lap Gap Lead. (Laps)
1 Casey Stoner Repsol Honda Team 2:01.761 -- (16)
2 Dani Pedrosa Repsol Honda Team 2:02.005 +0.244 (36)
3 Jorge Lorenzo Yamaha Factory Racing 2:02.436 +0.675 (22)
4 Ben Spies Yamaha Factory Racing 2:02.819 +1.058 (31)
5 Alvaro Bautista San Carlo Honda Gresini 2:02.959 +1.198 (24)
6 Nicky Hayden Ducati Team 2:03.132 +1.371 (55)
7 Cal Crutchlow Monster Yamaha Tech 3 2:03.213 +1.452 (27)
8 Valentino Rossi Ducati Team 2:03.245 +1.484 (39)
9 Hector Barbera Pramac Racing Team 2:03.612 +1.851 (24)
10 Stefan Bradl LCR Honda 2:03.820 +2.059 (31)
11 Andrea Dovizioso Monster Yamaha Tech 3 2:03.830 +2.069 (23)
12 Colin Edwards NGM Mobile Forward Racing 2:05.510 +3.749 (25)
13 Franco Battaini Cardion AB Motoracing 2:05.563 +3.802 (11)
14 Ivan Silva Avintia Racing 2:08.109 +6.348 (32)
15 Yonny Hernandez Avintia Racing 2:08.767 +7.006 (16)

It rained at 2pm though...

http://www.crash.net/motogp/news/177...sepang_ii.html

Yes, and Rossi was the first bike out in the wet - by all accounts a sensible move to see how it worked in the wet conditions to get a feel for it before he has to do it in race conditions!

Although Ducati have said that they are concentrating on the electronics package, the times are encouraging and Nicky doing 55 laps with his shoulder is amazing!

Hmmm, what would it take for them to be discouraging?!

It's true that there were particular circs yesterday, though: VR going out early before the track conditions improved, but using up the tyre, then it raining just as they were going to up the pace with a second one. But in general I think it's a measure of how scarred we all are by last season that anything like top-6 is cheering. I find that pretty dispiriting tbh.

They've got nothing meaningful done today, given the further rain; more is forecast for tomorrow; and VR has been told that parts he'd hoped for in response to the testing at Sepang 1 won't be ready until 3 or 4 races into the season. So for all the optimism from the first tests I fear we're in for more disappointment, with the factory Ducs racing the best of the rest again. I'd love to be wrong.

It is very tough to call because we don't know how hard they're trying, whether to believe the team when they say they're concentrating on the electronics package rather than lap times, and Alex Briggs saying they'd done a lot of good things to the bike today.

At least they are out there testing. Honda suffered an engine failure and didn't want to go back out until they got some results back from the factory, so they've lost a day. Have they lost an engine from their allocation too?

The other thing is that testing rules have changed this season, so there's no reason, except for tyre allocation, that Rossi can't be testing every week between now and the first race of the season to help improve the bike. We know he's capable, they just need to find the bike to let him show it.

Yes I was wondering about that - but I assume the engine allocation is race only - ? Yamaha and Tech 3 seem to talking about switching engines without any sense of it counting.


I was wondering about that too! Ie if they leave Sepang after another wet day tomorrow, with a batch of unused tyres, surely the factory would think about trying to get a day or two somewhere in Europe, so that's it not all down to the the third and final test at Jerez.

Nothing stopping them doing this except their tyre allocation. They get a total for the season which includes tests (I think it's 203 tyres/pairs?) and so once they run out they're on part-worns ;)

Exactly. I wouldn't be surprised if they were on the phone trying to get somewhere for a day or two. Anglesey might be free.:frog:

They could book in on the Llandow trackday this weekend, should allow them to test 1st gear if nothing else :lol:

So they finish testing with VR 10th, and Hayden 11th, bested by both satellite Yamahas, Barbera on the satellite Duc (three-tenths quicker than the factory), and the rookie Bradl, and in front of only a test rider and 3 CRTs. If that isn't dispiriting I don't know what is. And they're trying: Rossi did 57 laps, the second-most of any rider.

To answer the question about the HRC engine - it doesn't count in their engine allocations for racing.

Rossi said that he wanted to stay with 1sec of Stoner, and he has (just!) at 1.077s behind. They are obviously heading in the right direction, but still a lot of work to do as yet.

But WOW! What a job Dovi has done - sticking the Tech3 Yamaha in front of the two factory boys! Great to see Crutchlow right up there as well and obviously Barbera too.

I'm disappointed by the CRTs, but to be honest I didn't expect anything else :(

VR said he wanted to stay within a second of Stoner by the end of the first test (when he was 1.5 off); I don't think they'll be content being a second off after the second test, and behind all the satellite bikes - including their own! Being a second behind the Hondas at the start of the year means finishing half a minute behind them in races.

I really therefore struggle to see how in any measurable sense they are heading in the right direction. But I can't say too often, I envy your optimism and I hope you're right!

You have to remember that they've just built a brand new bike. That means no data, no comparisons, no history ... no idea!

That they're even close to the front runners is a miracle, let alone a second down on the sorted Honda.

The other optimistic point is that reports are saying that the bike is responding to changes in the way they are expecting it to - which was not the case with the previous carbon-frame bikes. This means that once Rossi has decided how he wants it to ride, they will have a good idea of what they need to do to it because they know how to get there ... the bit that was missing last time!

It might not be sorted by the first race, it may take half the season, but I'm sure that the team is in a much better place than they were this time last season.

Well, you're optimistic, but I'm not, and more importantly, he's not!:

http://www.crash.net/motogp/news/177...ve_test.h tml

"unfortunately our position is a lot worse ... everything we tried here - especially to fix our biggest problems - didn't work ... now we also have the Monster Yamahas and satellite Hondas in front of us. We are very worried for this reason especially ... I'm too slow on corner entry and I cannot keep the right corner speed. I also have some movement in acceleration ... 0.6sec in the pace is quite a lot ... [Rossi explained that his biggest difficulty is understeer, which forces him to use the brakes too much, sapping his corner speed] ... unfortunately we don't fix nothing ... Unfortunately with this bike I'm not able to go faster and faster, like the guys on the other bikes, and we have to understand why."

Gulp.

Ouch! Let's see how they get on in Valencia ... that could be the real tell...

(Jerez no?)

You know what I meant ;)

Again Ducati really are playing catch up, Although the switch to a Alloy frame may not seem a radical step to many as it is common place on most makes of bikes these days, But to Ducati it is a new avenue they are having to explore.
They have probably been trying fixes that worked with a steel trellis frame or what VR and GB have found worked on the IL4 Yamaha or the V5 Honda but the new V4 1000 Ducati is a bit different. Most of the other race teams are just applying what they already know from racing very similar setups for the last several years. It took Honda all of the 800 Era to turn there alloy framed V4 into a championship winner, so I doubt they have done much different with the new bike and its bigger motor.

Somoene will no doubt prove me wrong, but as far as I can see, Ducati are back in their regular position, when you remove the Stoner factor - with the exception of 2006 when Loris did well on the 990, the Desmosedici has never been a consitently front-running bike. And to be fair - plenty of 2006/2007 was down to a non-level playing field when Ducati took the bold step of going to Bridgestone - I seem to recall in 2006 Loris was either unstoppable (Brno) or nowhere (Estoril). Ducati had acknowledged that they wouldn't beat the Japanese on the same tyres so were happy to go down a different route, knowing in some places they would be more competitive, and in some places, less competitive.
Now they are all on the same tyres and there is no Stoner...

I totally agree with that. Stoner's talent masked the historic ordinariness of the factory bike. Alas I think Rossi has only now realised this; he clearly thought the base package was less of a mess than it's proved.

So are we now saying that Rossi isn't as good as we all thought he was?

I'm not saying that - I'm just saying that Stoner is better than we all gave him credit for

I think Ducati are worse than we thought!!

But i'm still buying one.

Not in the Superbike world, before they joined in with Moto GP things like this never got discussed. More chat about the outcome of Moto GP testing then there was of Carlos Checas WSBk Crash and Win and thats on an old bike wcarrying an extra 6kg this year. Then again in WSBk they have stuck with a tried and tesed formula of 90 degree V-twin engine with Belt drive cams housed in a Steel Trellis frame, where as in Moto GP they were keep trying to break new ground

...talking of Checa, the DSC just had a namecheck off him on Twitter ;)

I worship the guy so I'm not very objective. But it seems to me an unfortunate collision of circumstances: he's a rider whose principal asset is supernaturally late-braking, relying enormously on front-end feel, getting on a bike whose front end is notorious - evinced both by Stoner's high number of crashes and his successive teammates' trials with it. And he climbed onto a bike which needs to be ridden on the edge to be competitive, not long after the worst accident of his career, which might have made him subconsciously a little less prepared to ride on the edge than in yesteryear.

It is incredible to think that a machine which won those 3 races at the end of 2010 was made to look so dysfunctional a few months later. And some of VR's and Burgess's claims - that CS was a poor development rider, and that they could sort its problems pretty easily - have come back to haunt them. So, yes, 9 world titles aren't easily belittled, but as MJS says, few realised just how good CS was.

Personally I'm convinced - on the basis of his pace in testing at the start of 2010 (fastest in 5 of 6 sessions from memory), and on the basis of his win (Sepang) and podiums after injury in late 2010, that if VR was still/back on the Yamaha, he'd be right at the sharp end. That makes the bike, or certainly the rider/bike combo, the problem.

Of course what Kev says about WSB is right. If I ran Ducati (ha!), standing back and looking at Ducati's relative lack of success in GPs, and esp in the current climate, I'd pull out and concentrate on sustaining the WSB hegemony.

(And if you're a Rossi fan I guess you hope that in the shuffle at the end of this season he gets back on a Honda or a Yamaha, though it's hard to see. And say...)