Repsol riders break two-minute barrier on final day at Sepang

The Repsol Honda Team leaves Sepang satisfied after three days of important set-up work with the Honda RC212V they will use to compete this year. In this third and last testing day, Casey Stoner and Dani Pedrosa surprised again his rivals with impressive lap times under 2 minutes.

When there is less than a month left for the start of the 2011 season in Qatar, the progression of the three Repsol Honda Team riders with the RC212V allow to face the first race of the World Championship with optimism.
Dani Pedrosa wanted to take advantage of the perfect conditions of this morning to get the most from his Honda RC212V. In his case it was on the third lap when he was able to pass the 2-minutes barrier with a time of 1 minute, 59 seconds and 803 thousandths.
After this spectacular start, for the rest of the day the Repsol Honda Team riders focused on the set-up of their bikes. In the morning, Dani Pedrosa focused on the electronic configuration of his bike’s engine and on the suspensions, while in the afternoon he completed a series of consecutive laps, although without doing a proper race simulation.

After concluding these three days of test in Malaysia, the long winter will reach its end in Qatar, where first there will be two more testing days before the first race of the season on march 20.

Dani Pedrosa 1’59.803 sec, 38 laps, 211 km.
“We did a very good three days testing; both tests here in Sepang have been very positive. We improved the braking and worked a lot with different chassis configurations and electronics. It’s been a much better winter test than last year, even we know that everybody will improve for the first race. I’m leaving Sepang satisfied and I think testing in Qatar will give further opportunity to check our work at another circuit, with a different layout and track conditions to what we have had here.

I’ve spent more or less the same time with last year’s chassis and the modified 2011 chassis and my best lap time was with the 2011 version, but it will be nice to check it again in Qatar and take there the final decision. I think the bike and myself are in a good shape and we are getting to Qatar with more confidence than last year, but we need to keep our feet on the ground because we had many pro blems at the beginning of last season and then we improved a lot, so the others can do the same. Nothing is clear until we start racing”.

Source: Repsol Media