The third and final winter test to be held at Sepang finished on Thursday with rookie
Jorge Lorenzo upstaging superstar team-mate
Valentino Rossi, despite what he later called a 'bad day'.
Rossi had concluded his Malaysia test three hours before Lorenzo's last-gasp qualifying lap - and the Italian headed back to Europe a happy man after completing a race simulation, which saw him circulate 'consistently under lap record pace' (see separate story).
Prior to the simulation, Rossi recorded a 2mins 1.190secs qualifying tyre time - and it was that marker that Lorenzo beat with an impressive 2mins 0.705secs on his 72nd and final lap of the day.
But on race tyres, Rossi kept a clear advantage, clocking a 2mins 1.437secs during his race simulation, while Lorenzo's top race-tyre time was a 2mins 2.142secs - slightly down on the Spaniard's January best.
Indeed, Lorenzo left Sepang a little disappointed.
"This has been a difficult test for us but not completely negative," he said. "The major problem is still the front end going into the corners; the bike is not stable and we also have a bit of vibration. We've tried many different settings but we haven't been able to improve as much as we expected, so this means that I still need to adapt my riding style in some areas.
"Today I started to do a race simulation but I came in again because my pace was not good enough," he admitted. "At the end of the day we tried some qualifying tyres and I was able to improve on my time from the last test, so that's positive. I'm not worried about what's happened here; I've had bad days before and I have confidence that we will find the right way forward. I am looking forward to going to a different track now and seeing what happens there."
"After the January test, when we had quite a good pace, we hoped to improve again this time but unfortunately this hasn't been the case," confirmed team manager Daniele Romagnoli. "We've tried many different things with the chassis and the suspension settings but we still have some problems going into the hard braking areas."
