Repsol Honda | Jerez Day One
- From: TRS Media | Published: March 28th, 2009 - 3:16 pm
The Repsol Honda Team joined the rest of the MotoGP contenders at the Jerez circuit today to begin the final pre-season test of 2009. In the morning, the factory Honda squad was greeted by leaden skies and a wet track as heavy rain fell on the famous venue in southern Spain. At first this gave the riders the chance to work on RC212V’s wet set-up, but once the rain stopped the surface rapidly dried and the team were able to complete a profitable afternoon’s dry testing.
Italian rider Andrea Dovizioso made steady progress throughout the afternoon as he worked on a series of chassis and engine adjustments aimed at honing the RC212V ahead of the season opening night race on 12 April. He finished with a best lap time of 1m.40.821s – 1.030s behind the fastest lap of the day – and remained confident of making further improvements tomorrow.
Test rider Kosuke Akiyoshi, who has replaced the recuperating Spaniard Dani Pedrosa for this test, also performed useful evaluation of some updated parts on the factory RC212V. The former MotoGP racer lapped in a creditable 1m42.286s and was able to give valuable feedback and analysis to Dani’s technical crew.
The test will continue tomorrow, punctuated at 2.05pm by the now-traditional 45-minute televised session where the riders go all out to set the fastest time – the best lap being rewarded by a BMW sports car. Either side of this dramatic interlude, the Repsol Honda Team will make the most of the track time to make final preparations for the first race, which takes place in Qatar.
Andrea Dovizioso: Best lap time 1m40.821s
“Despite the rain this morning the track dried quite quickly so we could make good use of the day. That’s good because Honda has brought a lot of new material here and we’ve got plenty of things to test. In general the package has improved and we’ve made progress on both the engine and chassis side. Obviously we want to take another step to make sure we’re fully competitive at the first race, so we’re planning to have another good day tomorrow.”
Kosuke Akiyoshi: Best lap time 1m42.286s
“This was quite a good first day. Though it rained in the morning, we managed to do some work on wet settings, which was useful. It’s my third time on this machine and there is still a lot of power to get used to! When the circuit dried we were able to begin working on a range of engine and chassis settings and the progress was pretty good, taking one step at a time. I’m quite happy with my lap time from today, and we’ll be looking to improve that further tomorrow.”
