The factory Moto GP Yamaha team of Valentino Rossi and Jorge Lorenzo — or teams, really, since each rider has his separate group and tire choice — skipped the recent Australian tests in favour of a return to Sepang in Malaysia.
They were joined by the factory Honda team with Nicky Hayden, the Gresini Honda team, and test riders on more bikes for both Yamaha and Kawasaki.
Lorenzo finished the test with the fastest overall time, nearly half a second ahead of his more famous team-mate, which no doubt didn’t go down well with Rossi. Lorenzo complained of front-end instability when turning in, and passed on doing a race simulation in favour of more testing.
Rossi, on the other hand, did a race simulation on the last day in which his times were consistently under the existing lap record and faster than his January times. It was only his third time on the Bridgestone tires.
The factory Honda team with Nicky Hayden worked for only two days out of the three, primarily on chassis set-up and tire testing. The Gresini team of Shinja Nakano and Alex de Angelis did likewise over the three days.
Kawasaki showed up with test riders Olivier Jacque and Tamaki Serizawa, mostly working on tire testing for Bridgestone. Lead rider John Hopkins was home in the States recovering from his Australian fall, while Anthony West took a break back home in Aus.
The next "official" test where everyone will show up is at Jerez in Spain, February 16-18.
