Yamaha rider and reigning World Champion Jorge Lorenzo finished third during the first day of testing and despite being 0.
481s from rival Casey Stoner, he was happy with the improvements on his M1 having found that elusive traction that he lamented during the previous test at Sepang and he also finally received the new chassis that Yamaha had promised.
“Today was a good day for me, we worked on the traction to improve it from the previous test which helped us a lot in the set up, I’m now very satisfied with it,” said Lorenzo.
“We have our chassis for 2011 now and we are working on it as well as our engine spec.
With the improvements we’ve made we can now brake a little later and enter the corners a little more quickly as well so I was able to do some good fast consistent lap times this afternoon when it was still very hot on the track.
” Lorenzo’s team mate Ben Spies took the sixth spot today and as usual the Texas Terror was happy with his lap times on used tires.
“Today we came to this test with the engine configurations we’re going to race with so both bikes have that.
We just warmed up in the morning and spent the afternoon on one set of tyres.
We set our fastest lap of the day when it was very hot and mid race distance on a hard tyre.
We’re saving some tyres for the end of the test when the track’s good.
We worked on some race set up and I also worked on some different riding styles.
We’ll start again tomorrow with plenty more to do.
We tried a couple of shocks and found a few tenths and were still consistently fast on used tyres which was promising.
It’s definitely a good day and I’m happy with it.
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