Yamaha Tops Second Day of Sepang Test as Honda Twiddles Thumbs

Ben Spies topped the time sheets ahead of teammate Jorge Lorenzo as Yamaha continued its MotoGP pre-season testing in Malaysia.

While their rivals at Honda were idled by an engine problem, the two factory Yamaha riders found improvement on their Day One times and gathered data about riding in both wet and dry conditions.

Spies set the best lap time at 2:01.285 while testing different chassis settings in the morning. After a heavy rain midday, Spies returned to the track  to work on wet riding setups.

Today went well, the rain caught us out again but we got everything we needed to do done before lunch including some different chassis set ups and some electronics which we were pretty happy with. The rain started to come down so we waited until it subsided a little bit but with still a full wet track with standing water which we needed. We haven’t ridden the thousand in the rain and I’ve never ridden this track in the rain so it was good to get some laps in. I had quite a good feeling with the bike in the rain; straight away it felt pretty good so we rode in full wet conditions and stayed on wets when it dried out a little and was greasy. We’ve got a lot of stuff to do tomorrow so we’re hoping for a dry day! – Spies

Lorenzo’s day was spent refining power delivery from the new 1000cc M1. His fastest lap time was just slightly off Spies’ pace at 2:01.293.

Today we improved a little the connection with the throttle and the engine, it’s much smoother and easier to ride, a big step forward from yesterday. We were able to try the 1000cc M1 on the wet for the first time and we went very fast so it’s been a positive day and we are very motivated to improve the bike more. We managed to complete everything we wanted to test so it’s been good! – Lorenzo

The Monster Yamaha Tech3 satellite team also made progress on the second day of the test. Andrea Dovizioso trimmed two seconds off his Day One time to sit third on the second day with a best lap time of 2:01.522. His teammate Cal Crutchlow was fourth at a time of 2:01.695, an improvement of about a second and a half from Day One.

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By Dennis Chung