The 2008 pre-season reaches its end, and today the second-last of the winter training sessions were held on the Losail Circuit, in Qatar. Tomorrow Monday will be last day of training for the 125cc and 250cc riders, and this same week, on Monday 7th, the Qatar Gran Prix will officially kick off, with the first test of the 2008 World Motorcycling Championship.
The two Repsol KTM Team riders, Esteve Rabat and Julián Simón, have contInued testing on their new bikes. They have concentrated mainly on the setup of the suspension, the gearbox and various adjustments to the engine. After riding for the first time yesterday under the 1000 floodlights lighting the Qatari track, tonight the Repsol riders said that they felt much more comfortable under these new conditions, though for the 250cc riders the difficulty is greater, as next weekend they will ride well into the night, with the resulting increased humidity that reduces grip on the tarmac.
Hiroshi Aoyama and Mikka Kallio, both riders who will receive technical support from Repsol with their KTM 250cc bikes during the 2008 season, also continue to work on the KTM 250 FRR with which they will attempt to snatch the quarter-litre title, after giving a fine performance at the end of last season.
Julián Simón >> Audio
These training sessions are turning out to be quite tough. We’re still testing things, but we’re a bit short of good tyres for these training sessions because have a limited amount for the race and we cannot use them now. tomorrow the idea is to use a good tyre to see if the work we’ve done on the bike is correct. Because right now it’s a bit complicated setting up the bike with tyres we won’t use for the race. We have to keep insisting; the mechanics are working very hard, they’re helping me a good deal, and though for the moment my times are not that good, we are hopeful that tomorrow we can improve some more. We’re getting used to riding at night and to the lighting on the track.
Esteve Rabat >> Audio
It’s been a tough day from the start and it took us a while to pick up the pace. I can’t say too many positive things, because we still have a lot to do. We have had many problems and right now I’m working on finding the right line on the curves, We have to improve the performance of the suspension and the gear ratio; we probably need shorter gears to leave the curves with more strength. In the front of the bike we have some rebounds in the suspension that we have to get rid of, and also in the rear, though to a lesser degree. Though fortunately its nothing that can’t be solved, so tomorrow we’ll try to find solutions.
