Honda tops Sepang day 2

Though usually inconclusive when it comes to being a predictor of the MotoGP season, the first test at Sepang has thrown up some interesting results, with Randy de Puniet on his Honda topping the timesheets at under the existing lap record time.

He was chased by three Yamahas, led by Texan Colin Edwards on the Tech 3 machine, and then Aussie world champ Casey Stoner (pictured) on his Ducati.

Stoner felt he was making progress: "That was much better than yesterday! I felt much more comfortable on the bike from the first lap, so much so that we were able to start some front tyre tests for Bridgestone straight away. We've found some really interesting things and definitely a good base for the season - the Japanese guys are doing a great job. After lunch we starter a long run and everything went great for the first ten laps. I had a good pace together, inside lap record, but then we started to get a strange vibration from the rear that was upsetting the bike in a couple of braking areas. I preferred to stop to try and work out what it was and we found a small problem with the clutch. We went back out again on the same tyres but started to get cramps in my left arm, so we decided it was better not to push it too much and to sit the rest of the day out. When I think that I was still suffering from pain in my shoulder only a week ago I have to be really happy with how things are going. I'm still not 100% but I'm able to ride much better than I expected. Now I know that I can begin making the right preparations to be ready for the start of the season. We'll keep working with Bridgestone tomorrow and give the new qualifiers a try."

Yamaha in particular has a lot of catch-up work to do, after seeing its M1 comprehensively outgunned for much of 2007.

Multi-time champ Valentino Rossi (pictured) said, "Today we continued to work on bike set-up in the same way as yesterday and on the new engine, the electronics and the tyres. We continued with the pneumatic-valve engine as it's important to get as much mileage as possible behind us with this engine to check the performance, the reliability and just to gain experience with it. With the electronics we worked a lot on the acceleration mapping and I'm quite happy with this. Although it doesn't make us any faster, it helps me to be more comfortable on the bike. Finally we tested some different rear tyres with Bridgestone and also some qualifying tyres, although we didn't improve on the time with the soft tyres so we need to work more in this area. We completed a lot of work today and hopefully we can have another good day tomorrow to finish."

Sepang Lap Record
Casey Stoner (Ducati) 2007 - 2'02.108

Web: Ducati.com + Yamaha-racing.com