First test of 2010 comes to a close in Malaysia for Team San Carlo Honda Gresini |
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| Friday, 05 February 2010 19:05 | |||
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The first two-day Sepang test proved to be fairly tough for the Team San Carlo Honda Gresini duo, Marco Melandri and Marco Simoncelli, who had to work hard on the set-up of their Honda RC212V's. After a confident end to yesterday unfortunately day two got off to an inauspicious start. With wet weather conditions preventing both riders testing in the morning, things were complicated further when Simoncelli crashed in the early afternoon, grazing his elbow, left thigh and severely bruising the little finger on his left hand. Despite the pain, and being conscious of the minimal testing time available before the start of the world championship, “Super Sic” courageously went back out on track to continue his apprenticeship and set-up work with the MotoGP Honda. He picked up his pace once again and collected vital data for future tests. Melandri also ended the day well, finding the right direction to work in and leaving Sepang confident of further improvement during the next test at the Malaysian track on February 25th/26th. Marco Melandri ( 55 laps, best 2’ 02” 810 ) “It's been a very difficult day, continuing our work on the geometry of the bike and trying hard to find the right balance, the feeling in the front end and on corner entry. We found both positive and negative solutions before discovering a setting later on which could serve as a base geometry from which to work in the future. Then we also worked on the suspension, finding considerable improvements, however we still know there is still lots to do. With everything we've found we will be able to prepare a good working plan for the next test, it was just a shame about the rain here which cut the test an hour short and stopped us from testing with new tyres. The important thing however was to find the right direction and I think that in the end we've managed that so we now leave Sepang extremely confident.”  Marco Simoncelli (56 laps, 2’ 03” 245) “The first half of the day was relatively difficult because we couldn't get the bike to work properly and lost lots of time, then to top it off I had a crash. I had gone out with new tyres and after half a lap I came back in because of the same problems. I did a technical check and I went out once more. In the first left-hander although I was really paying attention (maybe not enough) the bike catapulted me off. I hit the asphalt hard and thinking about it now I was lucky just to get a few grazes, it could have been a lot worse. Later we went back to work in the afternoon and things were much more positive as the bike felt much improved and I was able to ride it better than yesterday, the feeling was better and the time I did wasn't by chance. Now we need to organise our ideas and think about a plan of attack for the next tests so I'm going home with high morale.” Fausto Gresini “It certainly wasn't an easy test, there was a lot to do for both Melandri and Simoncelli. We have a completely new bike and they were two challenging days with different suspension and electronics. Other things affected our work too like the rain and the crash, which fortunately didn't cause too many physical problems for Simoncelli. It's important also to remember that for Simoncelli it's almost a second debut for him and for his technicians MotoGP is a completely new experience. Also for Melandri the bike is something new to discover even for the Honda technicians too, which I have to say have helped considerably in finding the right set-up. In any case, we leave Sepang conscious of the fact that there's lots of work still to do, but well aware of our potential and that of the Honda RC212V. All in all it has been a good confidence boost for the upcoming tests.” Article Source: Gresini Racing
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