The second day of the IRTA test at Sepang enjoyed good weather conditions, enabling the riders to maximize their eight hours of available track time, and both Nicky Hayden and Andrea Dovizioso made good progress. Like yesterday, the American turned an impressive number of laps with the Ducati Desmosedici GP13 (69 in total), besting his time from yesterday by approximately one and a half seconds and finishing the day in eighth place with a time of 2:01.778, 1.496 seconds from the day’s top rider, Jorge Lorenzo.
Dovizioso, who was overtaken by his team mate in the final minutes, finished the day in ninth place with a time of 2:01.803, having completed 49 laps and improved on yesterday’s time by nearly a second.
Nicky Hayden
8th, 2:01.778 (69 laps)
“The good weather helped us to do a full day, and although it wasn’t easy, we did a good step. We tried some things with the fork that really helped smooth out the bumps, and I had improved feeling and much better consistency. Our gap to the front is still big, but we’ll keep pushing and working and trying to reduce that as much as possible. Tomorrow we’ll keep going in the same direction we went today. Hopefully the track will be really good and fast in the morning so that we can get some good work done.”
Andrea Dovizioso
9th, 2:01.803 (49 laps)
“It was a good day because we did our best work so far, in terms of both the quantity of work and the information we obtained. We really tried a lot of things with the setup, making big changes in order to understand the situation. Some of the adjustments improved the feeling, so they enabled me to brake a bit harder. Although the times were nothing special, in my opinion they’re not so bad, even with used tyres. We must continue working as we try to identify what we can do to improve some aspects, but we’re making progress.”
Michele Pirro had the thirteenth-best time, as he continued the setup work with his ‘laboratory’ Desmosedici GP13. His best time was 2:02.920.
