Ducati rider Nicky Hayden and Andrea Dovizioso made a small step forward during day 2 at Sepang giving them a small ray of sunshine that something is starting work, albeit slowly, as both riders were able to break the 2.
02 barrier that had characterized their previous three-day test at the Malaysian circuit.
“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,” commented Hayden, who finished 8th.
While Dovizioso said, “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.
”Ducati test rider Michele Pirro posted the 13th best time with his ‘laboratory’ Desmosedici GP13.