Preseason Test Sepang II: Final Laptimes, Day 1

The first day of the second official preseason test at Sepang is done and Honda once again dominated the proceedings. Casey Stoner and Dani Pedrosa took over first and second early on and didn’t leave those positions all day. Stoner carved out a margin of 0.373 seconds to his new Repsol Honda team mate in the end, showing once again his quick adaptation to the new bike. Pedrosa had yet another very consistent day and looks comfortable on the bike.

Only Yamaha was able to disturb the complete Honda domination with some fast laps in the final hours of the session with reigning champion Jorge Lorenzo finishing the day in third, ahead of a surprisingly fast Colin Edwards on the satellite Yamaha.

Spaniard Alvaro Bautista had a decent day of testing as the sole Suzuki rider, always around 10th or 11th fastest during the session and finally ending the day 10th fastest with a gap of 1.237 seconds to Casey Stoner. It’s a bigger gap than what he did in the first test at Sepang a couple of weeks ago, but beating his laptime from the first day of testing then. Suzuki’s test rider Nobuatsu Aoki is helping him out again with the workload.

Aspar Ducati rider Hector Barbera finished the day behind Bautista in 11th, but with a gap of almost half a second while Toni Elias still struggles a bit to re-adapt to the MotoGP class and clocked the 13th-fastest laptime of the day.

Testing continues tomorrow and will conclude on Thursday.

Final Laptimes Day 1 as of 6PM local time

Pos Rider Bike Time Diff Diff Previous
1 Casey Stoner Honda 2:00.987
2 Dani Pedrosa Honda 2:01.360 0.373 0.373
3 Jorge Lorenzo Yamaha 2:01.468 0.481 0.108
4 Colin Edwards Yamaha 2:01.654 0.667 0.186
5 Andrea Dovizioso Honda 2:01.747 0.760 0.093
6 Ben Spies Yamaha 2:01.808 0.821 0.061
7 Hiroshi Aoyama Honda 2:01.939 0.952 0.131
8 Marco Simoncelli Honda 2:01.996 1.009 0.057
9 Valentino Rossi Ducati 2:01.999 1.012 0.003
10 Alvaro Bautista Suzuki 2:02.224 1.237 0.225
11 Hector Barbera Ducati 2:02.645 1.658 0.421
12 Nicky Hayden Ducati 2:02.680 1.693 0.035
13 Toni Elias Honda 2:02.779 1.792 0.099
14 Randy de Puniet Ducati 2:02.920 1.933 0.141
15 Cal Crutchlow Yamaha 2:02.936 1.949 0.016
16 Loris Capirossi Ducati 2:03.082 2.095 0.146
17 Karel Abraham Ducati 2:03.167 2.180 0.085
18 T1 Yamaha 2:03.676 2.689 0.509
19 Nobuatsu Aoki Suzuki 2:04.639 3.652 0.963
20 T2 Yamaha 2:04.958 3.971 0.319