Khairuddin, Espargaró and Pedrosa the best in the Sepang Warm Up

The World Motorcycle Championship kicked off Sunday’s action at the Sepang Circuit with the warm-up sessions for the three categories, the last tests before the races, without a doubt 20 important minutes to get the bike ready for the race in each respective category. The first riders out on track were the Moto3 riders, with the great protagonist of this category being the local hero and pole-sitter at Sepang, Khairuddin, who was once again the fastest in the warm-up, setting a time of 2:15.039.

Khairuddin is showing great strength at home, in front of his fans and his people, and he also managed to be the fastest in the warm-up, leaving his main rival Miguel Oliveira at no more than a tenth, in a session where we saw the first seven riders in the classification within one second of the leader.

Behind Khairuddin came Oliveira, and closing the top 10 were Kent in 3rd, Cortese 4th, Rins 5th, Folger 6th, Moncayo 7th, Binder 8th, Rossi 9th and Salom 10th. As for the Spanish riders, they have had a good pace, with their positions in this last test before the race being Márquez 12th, Vázquez 13th, Martín 14th, I. Viñales 23rd and Rodríguez 27th.

In Moto2 we once again saw Pol Espargaró as the fastest. The 40 is very strong at the Malaysian circuit and has shown it again in the last test before the races, setting a lap time of 2:07.945, so he is once again the best, followed by Bradley Smith, who finished just over a tenth behind, but the Catalan was the only one to go under 2:07, so there is great pace at Sepang.

The top 10 of the intermediate category was completed by Márquez 3rd, Kallio 4th, De Angelis 5th, Rabat 6th, Iannone 7th, Simón 8th, Redding 9th and Zarco 10th. Meanwhile, the rest of the Spanish riders were placed 16th Pons, 18th Terol, 19th Elías, 25th Torres, 26th Cardús and 32nd Rosell.

The MotoGP riders were the last to take part in the World Motorcycle Championship warm-up, with the fastest again being Dani Pedrosa. The Honda dominated all the free practice sessions, although the pole-sitter is Jorge Lorenzo, who was flying around the Malaysian track yesterday, so the Catalan, with good feeling and great pace for the race, is trying to solve all the chattering problems they had yesterday.

So Pedrosa set a time of 2:01.551, leaving second-placed Casey Stoner just over two tenths behind, while Jorge Lorenzo was 3rd, 0.291s away, so the front runners are quite close together. Closing the top 10 with Dovizioso 4th, Crutchlow 5th, Bautista 6th, Spies 7th, Rossi 8th, Bradl 9th and Barberá 10th.

Completing the rider positions with Hayden 11th, Abraham 12th, Espargaró 13th, Pirro 14th, De Puniet 15th, Edwards 16th, Rolfo 17th, Ellison 18th, Silva 19th, Petrucci 20th. The best CRT was again Espargaró’s; Aleix is very strong and will surely fight again with his teammate for the victory in this MotoGP sub-championship. As for crashes, we only saw one, Dovi’s, luckily without consequences.

Lots of action coming up shortly.

Photo | MotoGP Official website