paulsimery: Dani Pedrosa leaves Sepang test on top

Monday, February 18, 2013

Dani Pedrosa leaves Sepang test on top

The third and final day of MotoGP testing at Sepang is over and Repsol Honda’s Dani Pedrosa closed out the first official 2013 pre-season test on top of the timesheets for the third consecutive day as the session wound down with the appearance of rain in the final hour, effectively freezing lap times, that again improved from yesterday, with five riders under the 2.01 mark.

Pedrosa’s best lap was in 2.00.100 and done on his fourth lap out of the 44 he completed and breaking the official Sepang race lap record and the pole record, but not Casey Stoner’s 2012 Sepang test record. Finishing Honda’s testing programme early, Pedrosa packed it in at 3pm, leaving the rest of the field to try to play catch-up.

Jorge Lorenzo made a quick start also in the morning and with his fourth lap he stopped the clock in 2.00.429, 0.329s slower than the Repsol Honda rider and unable to improve in the afternoon session and he finished 2nd, again. Team mate Valentino Rossi also finally made it under the 2.01 and he finished third and just 0.113 from the reigning World Champion, but it took his 43rd lap to get him there.

Marc Marquez fell to fourth, but the MotoGP rookie took his first tumble with the RC213V in the morning, harmlessly lowsiding (his lean angles wore out the leather on his elbow) out of the final hairpin in the morning session, but he returned to track to post his best time of the day in 2:00.636.

Cal Crutchlow finished fifth and he too was able to dip under the 2.01 barrier once, the same as Rossi. Stefan Brad seems to have recovered from his health problems as he was sixth and just 0.269s from the Yamaha satellite rider and the last rider to be within a second from Pedrosa.

Alvaro Bautista concluded the day in 7th and ahead of a highly impressive Bradley Smith who is continuing his learning process with the satellite M1.

9th and 10th went to Ducati riders Nicky Hayden and Andrea Dovizioso who shaved off only some thousandths of second from Wednesday’s lap times. Pramac rider Andrea Iannone was the only other Ducati rider to cut a couple of tenths of a second from his previous day that put him in 13th and little more than 7 tenths from veteran Ducati rider Nicky Hayden. Team mate Ben Spies decided to sit out the entire day of testing, because of general soreness, as he is still recovering from his shoulder injury and hasn’t been able to train.

Michael Laverty is also another rider who impressed in these testsm as the MotoGP newbie and PBM’s CRT rider started slowly to climb the charts and concluded the day as the second best CRT rider with his 15th spot leaving behind him riders like Randy de Puniet, Danilo Petrucci and Colin Edwards.

MotoGP testing will be returning to Sepang for another three days of testing from February 26th to the 28th.

MotoGP Sepang Day 3 Test Results

01 PEDROSA, Dani - Repsol Honda Team - 2:00.100 -

02 LORENZO, Jorge - Yamaha Factory Racing - 2:00.429 +0.329

03 ROSSI, Valentino - Yamaha Factory Racing - 2:00.542 +0.442

04 MARQUEZ, Marc - Repsol Honda Team - 2:00.636 +0.536

05 CRUTCHLOW, Cal - Monster Yamaha Tech 3 - 2:00.734 +0.634

06 BRADL, Stefan - LCR Honda MotoGP - 2:01.003 +0.903

07 BAUTISTA, Alvaro - Go & Fun Honda Gresini - 2:01.502 +1.402

08 SMITH, Bradley - Monster Yamaha Tech 3 - 2:02.093 +1.993

09 HAYDEN, Nicky - Ducati Team - 2:02.184 +2.084

10 DOVIZIOSO, Andrea - Ducati Team - 2:02.277 +2.177