The third and final day of the Pirelli test at Losail in Qatar, saw
Regis Laconi lap in a time of 1min 59.2secs on race rubber not a qualifier.
The French rider has continued to improve and he has obtained important information from "long runs" carried out over 14 laps, his times varied between 2min 0.5sec and
2min 1.5secs.
Laconi said, "We continued to work on the number one bike and today I worked with a lot of tyres. I found a previous tyre that pleases myself and that is likely to go well on several tracks. However the conditions of the track in this three days did not help us and I am sorry for Pirelli as they did not receive all the information they wanted. Otherwise I am satisfied because I did the time with race rubber, the squad did an excellent job and we finished the test with a 3sec improvement!”
It was not a fortunate day for team-mate
Fonsi Nieto. The Spanish pilot started well working on different types of tyre. Then a slide caught him out and he returned to the pits to have the bike repaired, it then suffered a technical at which point it was too late to get out on track on his number two machine. A difficult day that challenged the hard work from the Spanish rider, however he is satisfied with the three days of testing.
"Today it does not show what we could have achieved. Everything happened because of a stupid crash in a slow point of the track that ruined our times. The team was able to repair the bike in the shortest time possible, but just as I was going out, the bike had a technical and there was not more time. It is still the best work I have done in two days previous and I set a time under 2mins. It would have pleased me more to experience more of Pirelli's tyres and to carry out a "long run",” concluded Nieto.
The Kawasaki PSG-1 team will be back on track from 13th to 15th January at Phillip Island in Australia.
