Stoner and Pedrosa the best in the MotoGP test 2 at Sepang

Repsol Honda Team riders Dani Pedrosa and Casey Stoner closed yesterday’s second official MotoGP World Championship test at the Sepang Circuit. After three complicated days, these sessions come to an end, with the 2011 MotoGP world champion as the best, and his teammate, number 26, in second place.

Therefore, the official Team men of Honda have dominated the times in this test, despite not going out on track last Wednesday due to some problems with their machines and, above all, for safety reasons, and also despite the weather conditions experienced at the Malaysian track.

Stoner closed this second test with a 2:00.473, while Pedrosa finished 0.175s behind his teammate with a 2:00.648. Both focused on reducing bouncing and fine-tuning the chassis ahead of the start of the 2012 season.

Now they will get to rest until the end of March, when the last test before the first race of the calendar will take place: the IRTA test at the Jerez Circuit.
Statements from Dani Pedrosa:

In this test we focused a lot on working on the chassis to achieve the best setup, and we leave quite satisfied. This is a special circuit, and it is always important to leave with clear ideas for the future.

We have improved the braking a little, and we still need to fine-tune the corner entry and mid-corner, but we may notice more improvement when we focus on the engine electronics, which will be in Jerez.

We have improved the chassis quite a lot; we have less chattering than in the previous test, and that is positive. Today I tried a modification to the fairing to be more comfortable on the straights, and I noticed an improvement there too.

Statements from Casey Stoner:

We were unable to make the most of the three test days at Sepang once again; on the first day we could only complete 16 laps before it started raining, and yesterday we couldn’t do a single one. So today it was important to have good weather, get out on track and try various things. We have worked on the electronics to find an engine response that we like more.

We have also tried reducing the wheelbase to reduce the chattering, and it has helped a little, but so far we have not been able to eliminate it completely, so we still have a lot of work to do in this area. I feel good with the chassis because we have more traction and the bike turns better, although we need to eliminate those bounces. Apart from this, we are happy with the bike.

Source | Repsol Media Service