On his penultimate lap of the MotoGP Phillip Island tire safety test on Wednesday Jorge Lorenzo set the best time of the three-day visit with a late 1:29.068 best effort.
In the absence of injured World Champion Marc Marquez, recovering from a broken leg in Spain, Yamaha Factory Racing’s Lorenzo dominated the Australian test, posting the top time on all three days.
Wednesday’s final day saw a very brief shower and two stoppages due to crashes for Moto2 rider Tito Rabat, but was an otherwise highly productive day for Bridgestone and Dunlop.
Although this test was about narrowing down tire options for the Grand Prix here in October and less significant than other tests for lap times or bike development Lorenzo will nonetheless be pleased to have gone consistently faster than his rivals – especially after some tire frustrations at last week’s Sepang workout.
Lorenzo also carried out a strong race simulation on the final day, posting a succession of laps in the low to mid 1:30 range. Meanwhile, his fastest time of the test came on last year’s race tire.
Second on the timesheet overall and on the final day, Dani Pedrosa’s best time of the week was a 1:29.381 while his best Wednesday time came in at 1:29.458. Like his fellow riders at this track he now heads home to recover before round one at Qatar, having tested for six of the last eight days in total.
Third fastest this week was Ducati Team’s Andrea Dovizioso courtesy of his Tuesday best time – 1:29.387. He wrapped up early on Wednesday due to ongoing sickness, lapping just 23 times and finishing fifth on the day.
Fourth best overall and third quickest on Wednesday was Valentino Rossi, ending the test half a second down on his Yamaha teammate Lorenzo, but feeling more competitive than he was at this stage last year. Rossi tested a new fairing like Lorenzo had yesterday and the Italian stopped short of a full race simulation but was quick on a 13-lap run.
Also curtailing a race simulation was Cal Crutchlow, who had a front end issue after 18 laps. The Englishman was fifth best this week but fourth on Wednesday and he will be pleased to now be posting similar lap times on the ‘Open’ Ducati to his colleague Dovizioso.
The big story of the day for the Moto2 riders was the second of Rabat’s crashes, which resulted in the Spaniard destroying his Marc VDS Racing Kalex but fortunately escaping unhurt. He ended the test impressively just 3.1 secs. off Lorenzo’s pace on his 600cc machine.
Mapfre Aspar team’s Jordi Torres was the only Moto2 rider to improve on the final day though he ended up third best of the intermediate class riders, sandwiched between Marc VDS Racing’s Mika Kallio and his own Aspar teammate Nico Terol on the combined timesheet.
For the MotoGP riders present their next contact with their bikes will be at the opening round of the season in Qatar from March 20-23, whereas the rest of the premier class grid will carry out a three-day test at Losail from this Friday to Sunday.
–From motogp.com
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