Very high track temperatures and soft tires set new race record laps at Sepang International Circuit

Very fast races despite extremely high temperatures
 
“This weekend was a crescendo of temperatures, starting with Friday’s wet and cooler conditions, moving on to a warmer Saturday, and ending today, with track temperatures close to 60°C and 35°C air temperatures in the Moto2™ race. Although these are not ideal conditions for tyres, as the asphalt tends to become more slippery in the heat and loses some of its natural grip, even here in Sepang our tyres have shown excellent performance, allowing the riders to keep extremely fast paces. In particular, in Moto3™ the race was over 26 seconds faster than that of 2023, with an average lap improvement of almost 1.8 seconds, and Alonso improved the race record lap by 1.2 seconds. A very high pace from all the riders, given that 22 of them lapped below the previous lap record during the race. In Moto2™, on the other hand, with almost 10°C of asphalt temperatures, the riders struggled more while managing to maintain a pace in line with last year’s race, although this year it was hotter. Now we return to Europe after this long trip between Australia and Asia for the last Grand Prix of the year, which will close our first season as sole suppliers of the Moto2™ and Moto3™ Championships”.

Moto2™

· The soft compound tyres were the undisputed protagonists in the race, as they were fitted by basically all the riders on both the front and rear axle, with the only exception of Somkiat Chantra (IDEMITSU Honda Team Asia/Kalex) who used a medium SC2 on the front axle.

· Celestino Vietti (Red Bull KTM Ajo/Kalex) won from third place on the grid and also set the fastest lap of the race in 2’05.898 on the second lap, missing the race record lap set by Alex Marquez in 2019 by just 38 thousandths.

Moto3™

· The choice of the front tyre was quite balanced throughout the race, with 14 riders on the medium SC2 compound and the remaining 12 on soft SC1. As for the rear tyre, the soft SC1 was the most used compound (16 out of 26 riders), with just over a third of the riders on the grid opting for the medium SC2.

· Starting from third on the grid with medium SC2 compound tyres at the front and soft SC1 at the rear, David Alonso (CFMOTO Gaviota Aspar Team/CFMOTO) won the race by also setting a new race record lap of 2’11.047 on lap four and improving by more than 1.2 seconds the 2023 record set by Ayumi Sasaki (2’12.268). The first rider to go under Sasaki’s time in the race was David Muñoz (BOE Motorsports/KTM) on lap two. In addition to them, 20 other riders broke last year’s lap record.
 
· The race, held as last year over a distance of 15 laps and with about 50°C of asphalt temperature, finished in 33’03.671, 26.4 seconds faster than that of 2023 for an average improvement per lap of almost 1.8 seconds.