The Repsol Honda Team has enjoyed a productive second day of testing at the Sepang circuit in Malaysia with Casey Stoner topping the time sheets
After missing the first day of testing yesterday due to a back strain, Casey, the 2011 World Champion enjoyed good track conditions on his first outing on the bike in 2012. Casey spent the day doing a chassis comparison between his two RC213V chassis’ and finished the day as the fastest rider with a time of 2’00.895.
Team mate Dani Pedrosa used his second day of testing to work on braking and to improve the stability of the new 1000cc bike in corner entry, and look for solutions to reduce the chattering. He finished the day 4th with a time of 2’01.508.
The Repsol Honda Team will return tomorrow for the final day of this first Sepang test.
Dani Pedrosa >> Audio
4th at 0.613 sec. 35 laps, 194 km.
“Today we started to work well from the beginning; the track conditions were better than yesterday and it was hotter out there. We’ve been working on the setting of the bike, focusing mainly on the braking and reducing chatter, to improve the stability on the entry of the corners, that’s our main target right now. We made some comparisons between the two chassis’ and we will keep working with the bike and see what can we do before choosing. We have one more day, so we’ll try some other things with the shocks, this could help, and also different tyre pressures, we will see. I didn’t do many laps during the day, but now it’s time to test as much as possible and sometimes you have to spend more time in the garage, it’s normal. The new Bridgestone tyres are working ok, I just tried one hard on the rear but I didn’t have much grip and the soft ones are working better, even for the endurance they don’t look so bad”.
Casey Stoner >> Audio
1st – 2:00.895, 29 laps, 161 km.
“It was great to be able to ride today and everything went pretty well, although I would have liked to have done a few more laps. We spent most of the day on the new chassis comparing it back to back with the one we had in Valencia and we found a good direction and where we want to go. As usual it would be great to take some elements from one chassis and some from the other, but at least we found the direction we are happy to follow. We used the hard front tyre this afternoon but found we had more chattering with it so we have to work on this, there is still room for improvement. We didn’t get a chance to use the new spec tyres that Bridgestone have brought here, we’ll try them out tomorrow and go from there”.
