MotoGP World Championship points leader Jorge Lorenzo ended yesterday’s one-day test at the Aragon Motorland Circuit with the quickest lap time, the Spaniard and his Yamaha teammate Ben Spies working on a new engine specification, various chassis settings and some electronics, according to Yamaha.
Spies was fastest for most of the day until Lorenzo gapped him by .255 of a second at the end of the session. Those two were followed by Monster Tech 3 Yamaha’s Cal Crutchlow and Andrea Dovizioso, giving Yamaha the top four spots in a test Honda’s factory men Casey Stoner and Dani Pedrosa elected not to participate in.
“This test has been very important because it’s not easy to find the best set up for the 1000cc bike here as there is so much change from the 800,” Lorenzo said. “We tried the engine again like we did in Barcelona; there wasn’t so much difference so the engineers now have to make a decision for moving forward. They will consider the data from today to help them.”
Spies left the test happy.
“Today was a good test, to come back after not such a fantastic race on Sunday and be consistently fast here and in the Catalunya test is important,” the Texan said. “We’ve worked really well with the bike and the electronics and just tried to change a few things and fine tune. The track was a lot better than we thought. We were expecting it to be quite dirty, but it wasn’t. I feel like I’m getting back up to the potential of the bike and myself which is good.”
Lorenzo’s best lap was a 1:498.187 with Spies lapping at 1:49.442. Crutchlow topped his teammate Dovizioso with Pramac Racing Ducati’s Hector Barbera rounding out the top five.
Marlboro Ducati’s Nicky Hayden ended up sixth with his teammate Valentino Rossi eighth.
“We couldn’t really have asked for a better day, weather-wise,” Hayden said. “It was pretty hot, but not unbearable, so a good opportunity to try some things and do some good work. The day started out pretty well, as we were able to make a couple of good steps straight away. This afternoon we tested some bigger parts for Ducati and weren’t able to go faster. Of course we’d like to be closer to the top, but we got some good data, and hopefully we can put it all together soon with a good result.”
Rossi completed by far the most laps of anyone at the test with the Italian circulating 78 times – despite a technical problem that cost him time. His last lap was his fastest. Honda Gresini’s Alvaro Bautista, meanwhile, was the meat in the Ducati sandwich in seventh place.
“It went pretty well because it was important to do some riding at this track, where I didn’t know all the ‘secrets,’ ” Rossi said. “I’m just sorry to have had a small problem at the end of the session. Maybe a cable in the ECU broke, so I was stuck in the garage for 15 minutes, which prevented me from using the second soft tire that I had available. Otherwise, I think I could have been a little bit better. We didn’t have enough time to try the aluminum swingarm again, but since we found some positive things, we can say that it was a good test.”
