Yesterday there was a glitch when they indicated that Ben Spie had lapped in 1.
58, but there wasn’t any glitch today when Casey Stoner posted a 1’59″607 with his RC213V.
His lap on the third day of testing at Sepang and early this morning was 0.
058s faster than the lap time he set during the 2011 Sepang tests with his highly evoluted 800cc machine.
The Australian champion is still suffering from back pain, stating that it seemed that he’d ‘felt like he had done three rounds with Mike Tyson’ but his fast lap set a warning shot to his rivals, despite the fact that both he and Repsol Honda team mate Dani Pedrosa have yet to solve the chattering issues that emerged with the new Bridgestone tires.
Casey Stoner:“It’s been a good test in general, we only managed two out of the three days unfortunately but the weather has been really good to us and we’ve been able to do what we planned.
The day I missed hasn’t affected us too much and we’ve managed to complete our testing programme, to be honest I think track conditions on the first day weren’t that great anyway as the lap times were not so fast.
I’m still not feeling great with my back but the bike is ok, so we’ve made progress in reducing the chatter a little more and trying a few different things, some small settings on the shock that we haven’t tried before amongst other points.
So far it’s been pretty positive, we’ll just have to wait and see what we have for the next test and hopefully improve a little more.
Now I’m looking forward to getting home to Switzerland to see Adriana and await the arrival of our baby!”Dani Pedrosa: “Three days testing here in Malaysia is very tiring.
This morning when I woke up I was pretty sore and stiff, but once I got running I was a little bit better.
Anyway, it’s been worth it to do a general test of the engine, chassis and tyres and overall it is the biggest test we have done on this bike and we have good data to analyse and can start to build up points we need for the second test.
As I said yesterday, the biggest point to improve is on braking, and we are also working on the electronics to improve the management of the power and the grip level.
The chatter is still there, I know it’s something very difficult to fix, but I’m sure Honda is working hard on it.
In general, it’s been a positive test for us and we will come back here in three weeks with new ideas.
This bike is physically more demanding, you feel the power in the acceleration, the speed under hard braking and also the extra weight, but it’s alright.
I will keep working hard physically to prepare for the second test.
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