The Repsol rider keeps up the pace shown in Japan and is second on the first day of free practice at Sepang
The second place won by Andrea Dovizioso last Sunday at the Japanese Grand Prix was today repeated in another strong performance by the Repsol rider on his first outing at the Sepang Circuit, in which he finished second, behind Valentino Rossi. Dovizioso reaffirmed his excellent form in the last leg of the Championships and was again up amongst the fastest in the premier class.
The Repsol rider progressed slowly on a track where the asphalt did not stop increasing in temperature -above 54ºC-, in a suffocating atmosphere which reached 38ºC. Starting amongst the top five in the first moments of the practice, Dovizioso went on to set the benchmark times after the halfway point of the session.
It was not until the closing minutes when Valentino Rossi beat him by 109 milliseconds, relegating him to second place on the timesheets, where he remained until the end of the day. The Italian rider of the Repsol Honda Team focussed on fine-tuning the set-up of his Honda RC212V looking towards Sunday’s race, working together with his technical team, headed up by Ramón Aurín, to find the best combination of chassis, tyres and electronics. Although complaining of some problems with the front end of his Honda RC212V that needed resolving, the Italian rider found a positive balance by the end of the first free practice.
Andrea Dovizioso >> Audio
“I’m happy with this first session at Sepang because we were fast from the very beginning of the practice period. Today the conditions were really extreme in terms of the heat – even more than we’re accustomed to here – so physically it was very hard. We started from a good base today however. We will continue work on set-up improvements and adjustments to the electronics to increase the stability at the front end under braking. But I think we have found the limit of the tyres in these conditions, so I will also try to adapt my riding style to make further improvements to the lap time tomorrow. Overall we made a good start today”.
