Max Biaggi and the Repsol Honda Team keep on setting the pace in Barcelona.
The Italian rider sets the fastest time again and Nicky Hayden, in a better shape today, works his way up to fifth.
The MotoGP tests continue on the Catalan track and it’s been Max Biaggi again to clock the fastest time on the second day. Moreover, his Repsol Honda teammate, Nicky Hayden, got back the rhythm this afternoon alter a rather average performance yesterday. The Kentucky rider started to feel comfortable towards the afternoon after some changes made by the team engineers on his bike, he was finally able to set the fifth fastest time, some six tenths behind his teammate.
Due to his lack of confidence and comfort on the bike, Hayden had not been able to improve his lap times despite trying, loosing a lot of time in the fourth section, which has fast, downward corners. The changes made by the team’s technicians on the bike’s settings bore fruit in the afternoon and Hayden was able to reduce the times set yesterday by a bit more than a second.His teammate Max, who keeps showing himself more and more adapted to his new bike and team, is still working on the settings of his bike in order to find the best race settings: suspension tests and some touches to the geometry of his bikes took a large part of the day. In the final minutes and after having been always among the top six, Biaggi repeated the same performance as yesterday: he went on the track seven minutes before the end of the session, one first lap from the pit lane and in the next: fastest lap on the Catalan layout, improving by something more than three tenths the previous best time, set by Gibernau in 2004.
Repsol rider´s comments:
MotoGP Max Biaggi
1st, 1’42.260, 68 laps
Friday 1st, 1’43.158, 85 laps.
‘What we want to get these days is a good set-up for the race and that’s what we’ve been working on, not for tomorrow’s standings. We’ve been doing some small changes on the bike today; some worked out and some others didn’t. We’ve been testing changes in the geometry and the suspensions; this is where we’re going to continue working tomorrow. It’s a pleasure for me to break the record, but I’m sure that tomorrow the times will keep on improving. Everybody is improving, although they aren’t giving their very best yet. We’re doing a good job and I’m very happy, because the whole team is working on the same direction, although there is still a lot of work to do.’
MotoGP. Nicky Hayden
5th, 1’42.953, 92 laps
Friday 11th, 1’44.284, 84 laps
‘I’m much more satisfied than yesterday, because we’ve managed to improve a lot. I actually felt quite frustrated because no matter how hard I tried and how hard I pushed, things went worse. After lunch we found some solutions that allowed me to improve and I regained part of the confidence I missed yesterday, especially entering the corners. In T4, the fast, downward corners, I was much faster and that helped me to set good times. I’m sure that we’ll be more consistent tomorrow. I’ll try to have fun and clock a good time. Now the times aren’t that important, but they are not that far from what they’re going to be the rest of the season.’
Classification:
- M.Biaggi (Repsol Honda) 1.4.260.
- A Barros (Honda) 1.42.506
- S.Gibernau (Honda) 1.42.796
- M.Melandri (Honda) 1.42.926
- N.Hayden (Repsol Honda) 1.42.953
