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Sepang Test II

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As had been widely expected, Ducati will not have the GP15 ready for the first test at Sepang, in early February.

In an interview with the MotoGP.com website, due to be shown on 19th January, Ducati Corse boss confirmed that work was still underway on the all-new bike; and that instead, Ducati will be bringing an uprated version of last year’s bike, dubbed the GP14.3, to test aspects of the new design not requiring the new engine.

The delays have been trailed by both Dall’Igna and Paolo Ciabatti, speaking to the media at the Valencia test and at the Superprestigio dirt track event in December. The GP15 is a completely new bike, designed from the ground up, with a completely redesigned engine.

At day two of round two at Sepang, MotoGP’s riders once again had to contend with the changing Malaysian climate, as rain continued to make an appearance the Sepang International Circuit. Sidelined for the day, HRC played it safe with its riders after one of Dani Pedrosa’s engines failed during the previous day’s testing, thus making the day strictly a Ducati and Yamaha affair. With Yamaha taking the top four spots on the timesheet (lead by Ben Spies), it is clear to see at this point in the game where Ducati is with its development of the GP12.

With the engine of Dani Pedrosa’s Honda RC213V suffering a failure on Tuesday, HRC decided to sideline all Honda riders for the second day of testing at MotoGP’s second Sepang testing week. Giving up the ghost on Pedrosa’s 36th lap, HRC flew the motor back to Japan last night for Honda engineers to examine. However with the engine not arriving at HRC’s race shop until around lunch time today, Honda chose to sideline its factory and satellite riders until a determination for the failure could be ascertained.

Returning to Malaysia for a second round of testing, MotoGP’s first day at Sepang was delayed by torrential rain. Coping with the water and intense humidity, MotoGP riders did get to spend some laps around the Southeast Asian circuit, with Casey Stoner once again dominating the time sheet. Apparently not getting the memo that fatherhood makes you slower on the race track, Stoner was the only rider to get into the 2’01 lap times, and did so seemingly at will during his 16 lap testing day. Second quickest was teammate Dani Pedrosa, who was a quarter second back, while Yamaha’s Jorge Lorenzo was over half a second back from Stoner, and third quickest for the day. Noticeably quick was Alvaro Bautista, who continues his dark horse status, as the Spaniard was fifth quickest and even bested Nicky Hayden, who lead the Ducati contingency.

“It was really hard to leave Switzerland,” said new father Casey Stoner. “Ally woke up for a feed at the same time as I was leaving for the airport and I didn’t really want to leave. The first day of testing has gone well. We started off where we left last time, but the track conditions have been a little worse. We have some work to do. This morning we managed to compare a few things back to back. We’ve tried a new set of brake discs to try and reduce the brake fade that I’ve been having at the last test, so that’s been an improvement. We’re trying a few other things with set up to shorten the wheelbase and get a little more traction. We have a couple of things we can try to change the stiffness and also move the weight around a little bit to try and upset the chatter and reduce the frequency. This afternoon I have no doubt we would have gone a second or a second and a half faster, but the rain came out and the track didn’t dry up enough to warrant going out, so we’ll wait until tomorrow.”