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Yamaha MotoGP Sepang free practise report

October 20, 2012

The Grand Prix of Malaysia got underway today at the Sepang circuit in typically hot conditions with humidity over 85%. Yamaha Factory Racing riders Jorge Lorenzo and Ben Spies spent the morning session working through a base set up to try and improve rear grip issues at a number of corners. The afternoon’s second free practice proved to be useless for the majority of the MotoGP riders as an early rain shower left them with a half wet, half dry track. As a result both Yamaha Factory riders only ventured out for a single lap on wet tyres and didn’t record a time, the conditions making it very easy to crash and providing little useful data.

Jorge Lorenzo

Position : 3rd Time: 2’01.934 Laps: 14

“This morning was great, from the beginning I was competitive and more or less at the same pace as Dani and Casey. Casey especially is much stronger than he was in Japan. This afternoon unfortunately we couldn’t practice because of the weather. We need to improve the behavior of the bike in acceleration for tomorrow, it’s a little nervous so we need to make it a little easier.”

Ben Spies

Position : 6th Time: 2’02.358 Laps: 16

“This morning was pretty normal, the track wasn’t so great and we had some electronic issues that hindered us a little but the bike was working pretty well. We were hoping to get a good session in this afternoon but the rain was against us. It wasn’t worth taking any risks with the track being half dry and half wet so we’ll wait for tomorrow and see what happens.”

Wilco Zeelenberg – Team Manager

“Overall it’s been a disappointing day because we missed a complete practice this afternoon which is a shame because I think everybody was ready to step up the game and improve things. There were four corners wet and the rest dry so a useless second practice. Let’s see tomorrow, hopefully we’ll have better weather.”

Massimo Meregalli – Team Director

“As has happened a few times this year, we have had almost a completely useless Friday. Fortunately we were able to get some data in the morning session as we could get nothing in the afternoon. We prepared some changes from the first session so we hope that tomorrow will be dry so we can test them. It could be that Sunday is mixed like today so tomorrow is very important to complete some laps and get as much information as possible.”