Today the Repsol Honda Team completed its third night time practice session at the Circuit of Losail, in Qatar. Andrea Dovizioso and his team carried on with the development of his Repsol Honda RC212V so as to be ready for the first race of the season at the same venue. The Repsol rider did 74 laps of the 5.38km track over the six hour training period under the floodlights. On the final lap he stopped the clock at 1’57.449 seconds, improving his best time from yesterday by four tenths.
Dovizioso carried out the plan he had scheduled for today, the aim being to gradually overcome the problems he has had getting used to his new bike. He also did a series of fifteen laps without a break and this allowed him to get more data about the performance of the Bridgestone tyres over longer distances. After the three days of tests the Repsol rider has a very positive view of the progress made at the track in Qatar. The next date in the calendar for the Repsol Honda Team is the Official MotoGP Test at the circuit of Jerez on 28th March.
Andrea Dovizioso
“All in all I’m quite satisfied with these three days of testing because we have learned a lot. Today’s session didn’t go exactly according to plan because after an hour we started to get some chatter, which complicated the session and meant we had to adapt our plan for the day. I was able to do a longer run of 15 laps which showed that we still need to make some machine adjustments to suit the Bridgestone tyres. For this circuit specifically we need to improve the grip entering the turns, and in general find a smoother power delivery. There is still quite a lot of work to do, but I’m still pleased because we learned a lot about the bike at this test.”
