Further progress for Bautista on final day of testing “but we still have a lot of work to do”

The final day of the opening MotoGP test of the year took place under scorching temperatures of over 30° Celcius and with over 50° Celcius track temperature at the Sepang circuit.

Despite the intense heat, Alvaro Bautista and his tecnicians continued to work hard with Showa technicians in order to obtain valuable suspension data. The long process will put Bautista in the best shape to be competitive when the season begins.

Bautista ended the test half a second behind fellow Honda rider Bradl, who this year has factory-spec machinery at his disposal. Bautista’s fastest lap came on the 29th of 48 full laps at the end of a three lap run.

He and his Go & Fun Honda Gresini team are the only ones using Showa suspension, which meant he spent the day doing short runs to evaluate the differences in suspension setup. The work was made more difficult by scorching heat, the hottest of the three days, which made the track greasy and exacerbated chatter problems that most riders were suffering.

Alvaro Bautista (2’01”502 – 43 laps) “The intense heat that we’ve had over the past few days ended up making it considerably harder work out on track. That didn’t affect our schedule however and we continued with the job of setting up the Showa suspension. We are making progress, but we still have a lot of work to do and our aim remains to have everything ready for the season start in Qatar. We have gathered a lot of data that we will use at the next test here in Sepang at the end of the month.”

Sources: Gresini Racing, Honda Pro Racing
Photo: Honda Pro Images