Dani Pedrosa decided to finish testing as the rain showed up. Nicky Hayden makes use of the rain shower to continue testing.
Despite a clear improvement of the weather conditions this morning, with lower temperatures and less feeling of heat and humidity, a heavy rain shower fell at 15.00h over the Malaysian track of Sepang, hindering the MotoGP riders from continuing with the work under normal conditions. From that moment, Dani Pedrosa and his team decided to finish today’s tests, while team-mate Nicky Hayden, who has the responsibility of evolving the Honda RC211V 2006, decided to continue testing on a completely flooded track.
The rain fell strongly over the Malaysian track for more than one hour, but the track had completely dried for the last half our of the scheduled test (17.30 to 18.00h) due to the heat. Both Repsol Honda Team riders were already lapping on the Malaysian track around 10 oclock in the morning, with Dani Pedrosa focussed on discovering all the secrets of his Honda RC211V, while his team-mate Nicky Hayden was changing between the three bikes he had in his garage doing tests and more tests. At around 14.00h, Dani and his team decided to stop to check some things in the settings and have lunch before continuing with the tests scheduled for the afternoon.
Among others, they had planned to make a race simulation, which would have been Danis first simulation in MotoGP, to assess his level on the Malaysian track in his third visit since his change of class. However, the rain spoiled the plans and theyll have to wait until tomorrow to do this and several other planned tests. Today, Dani Pedrosa made a total of 50 laps on the Malaysian track, i.e. 277 kilometres.
Team-mate Nicky Hayden preferred to get back on the track when the rain shower stopped to make some suspension and tyre tests on the wet. The Kentucky rider made a total of 53 laps in dry conditions (293 kilometres) and 15 laps on the wet (83 kilometres). Tomorrow will be the last test day on the circuit of Sepang, Malaysia.
Dani Pedrosa:
Well, its been quite good; too bad it rained in the end. We usually stop later for lunch, but did it earlier today in order to have more time to test in the afternoon, but we couldnt. We still had to test some tyres we couldn’t test yesterday, but we haven’t been able to do it today either, because just when I was getting on the track it started to rain. I didnt want to continue in the wet because I was a bit tired, so Ill take the chance to rest now, so Ill be fresh tomorrow. We set good times quickly this morning; it didnt take us as long as yesterday. I havent tested too many things today and to tell you the truth I still dont know whether everything weve tested really worked out well. We had planned to do a race simulation after lunch, but we couldnt due to the rain. Lets see if we can do it tomorrow.
Nicky Hayden:
Today weve been lapping on the new, longed-for motorbike all day long. This has really been the first time Ive been able to test it a whole day, doing several laps and trying to get the most out of it. The new machine has very good things, but its very hard and difficult to be constantly testing different settings. Unfortunately we havent had the chance to test it for a longer time due to the rain, but weve done some interesting test on the wet and I think that its been a good day in general terms.
Unofficial times
- Shinya Nakano, 20180
- Loris Capirossi, 2.0187
- Valentino Rossi, 20189
- John Hopkins, 2.0190
- Dani Pedrosa, 2.0193
- Carlos Checa, 2.0206
- Colin Edwards, 2.0220
- Randy De Puniet, 20237
- Makoto Tamada, 2.0256
- Toni Elias, 2.0262
- Marco Melandri, 2.0265
- Sete Gibernau, 2.0287
- Nicky Hayden, 2.0293
- Kenny Roberts, 2.0295
- Chris Vermeullen, 2.0318
- Alex Hoffman, 2.0423
- Jose Luis Cardoso, 2.0465
- James Ellison, 2.0508
