Team Suzuki Press Office – February 25.
SUZUKI MotoGP concluded the third and final day of official testing at Sepang International Circuit in Malaysia today satisfied with progress and developments made to the GSX-RR.
Team riders Aleix Espargaro and Maverick Viñales tested a variety of parts and set-up options that provided the team with important data to take forward to the next test at Losail in Qatar next month.
Today’s session, held in air temperatures of 32° and 60° track, saw Espargaro complete 50 laps with a best time of 2:00.275, giving him ninth position on the day. Viñales completed 43 laps with a fastest-lap of 2:00.604 for 14th on the timesheets.
Satoru Terada - Team Director/ Project Leader:
“We arrived at this test in Sepang only a short time after Sepang 1, so we haven’t had the chance to make very big improvements, but our engineers worked very hard and we managed to introduce several new specifications. Even if small, we did make positive steps forward, both in the engine and especially in electronics. We’ve also worked on the chassis and found good compromises on the set-up, so I’m very happy with how these days went.
“The riders had two small crashes but without major injuries and no particular damage to the bikes, so we had time to collect information. We will now go to Qatar with more improvements to be tested step-by-step.”
Aleix Espargaro:
“We are satisfied with today’s results, we ran a lot in hot conditions because yesterday we had some issues with those conditions with more than 50 laps. Today we ran a lot with 60° closing laps in 2.01. I’m very, very happy with the improvements on the pace. I’m missing the fast lap because with the two soft tyres I made a couple of mistakes.
“The bike is very improved, we worked a lot on electronic set-up and to find a better configuration of the traction control, which gave good results and let us cut one second off our time. We also worked on traction out of corners and it was important to verify the bike’s behaviour in hot conditions because they are similar to race conditions. We still have a lot of work to do but I’m confident and aware that I’m in a Factory team with a lot of people working hard to do the best job.”
Maverick Viñales:
“I leave Sepang with a very good feeling and satisfaction and we did a very good job without any major issues. I managed to improve my times a lot, both in the fast laps and the overall pace. I’m learning more and more about the bike, we made some changes in terms of set-up and electronics and I’m learning how to exploit them.
“Today I tried to get a good single lap time, but didn’t want to push too hard like I did yesterday when I crashed, so we focused more on consistency and we worked on the pace; we also got very important feedback from the bike which we can work on. I’m still a rookie, so I still need to understand so many things about the bike, but I’m performing well and my performance is improving day by day.”
Sepang Day 3 Test Times: 1 Marc Marquez (Honda) 1:59.115, 2 Jorge Lorenzo (Yamaha) 1:59.437, 3 Cal Crutchlow (Honda) 1:59.658, 4 Andrea Iannone (Ducati) 1:59.722, 5 Valentino Rossi (Yamaha) 1:59.833, 6 Bradley Smith (Yamaha) 1:59.883. 9 Aleix Espargaro (SUZUKI MotoGP) 2:00.275. 14 Maverick Viñales (SUZUKI MotoGP) 2:00.604.
