MotoGP Press Release
The Factory Yamaha Racing pair concluded the opening day of the Sepang Test extremely pleased with their early accomplishments.
Jorge Lorenzo and Ben Spies completed day one at the Sepang Test in positive moods, having worked through plenty on Tuesday and with more to look forward to across the remaining two days.
Lorenzo made some significant set-up changes during the lunch period to uncover an effective setting, one which allowed him to lap consistently fast throughout the afternoon on his Factory Yamaha Racing M1 and place third fastest by the end of the MotoGP day.
“Today was a good day for me, we worked on the traction to improve it from the previous Test which helped us a lot in the set-up, I’m now very satisfied with it,” said Lorenzo, whose best lap of 2’01.468 was just under half a second off leader Casey Stoner.
“We have our chassis for 2011 now and we are working on it as well as our engine spec. With the improvements we’ve made we can now brake a little later and enter the corners a little more quickly as well so I was able to do some good fast consistent lap times this afternoon when it was still very hot on the track.”
Team-mate Ben Spies focused on suspension settings after spending the morning easing himself back into the M1 seat, and the Texan was also pleased with his feeling with the bike at the end of the MotoGP day.
“Today we came to this Test with the engine configurations we’re going to race with so both bikes have that. We just warmed up in the morning and spent the afternoon on one set of tyres,” said Spies, who was sixth fastest with a lap of 2’01.808. “We set our fastest lap of the day when it was very hot and mid race distance on a hard tyre. We’re saving some tyres for the end of the Test when the track’s good.”
He continued: “We worked on some race set-up and I also worked on some different riding styles. We’ll start again tomorrow with plenty more to do. We tried a couple of shocks and found a few tenths and were still consistently fast on used tyres which was promising. It’s definitely a good day and I’m happy with it.”