DAY TWO of JiR Team Scot’s three-day test at the Sepang circuit in Malaysia was once more made up of hard work and hot and humid weather. The team is working towards putting Andrea Dovizioso in the best position set-up wise with his Honda MotoGP machine for the first race of the season in Qatar in just six-weeks time.
Today the team once more worked on improving the general handling of the Honda RC212V and eliminating the problems encountered yesterday with corner entry and engine braking. The team also tested some new tyres from Michelin, while Andrea also took the opportunity to become more familiar with Michelin’s qualifying tyre. The 21-year-old Italian managed to complete 55 laps during the day and improved his position to 8th place overall.
Dovizioso:
“I’m not totally satisfied about today, but this is because I set high targets for myself and want to solve as many problems as possible and as quickly as I can! We still have some issues with the engine braking setting and we do have some rear-end chattering from the bike. This in turn makes it harder to set-up the chassis so we are working hard together to find the best setting, which will give us a solution. It’s tiring riding a bike, which does this, so we will work hard to improve it. We are working hard with Michelin, as I know we can move forward together. Today I tried a qualifying tyre to find out how much faster I could be and we went around three-tenths quicker, which shows we need to improve the general setting of the bike.”
Work will continue tomorrow before bike, rider and team pack-up and head to Australia for next week’s MotoGP test at Phillip Island.
