Italian Danilo Petrucci (Ducati Desmosedici GP15) relieved Spanish Jorge Lorenzo (Yamaha YZR M 1) at the end of the second day of MotoGP preseason practice at the Sepang Malaysian circuit and both stayed close to the barrier of the two minutes.
Petrucci marked very early (ninth lap), when the heat did not greatly hinder the performance of motorcycles and riders, his best time, 2: 00.095, which none of his rivals could lower, although the triple MotoGP world champion, Jorge Lorenzo , who completed 32 laps, was barely sixty thousandths of a second behind, after suffering an inconsequential fall.
Worse results could have been the mishap at the end of the straight by Frenchman Loris Baz (Ducati Desmosedici GP14.2), as the Avintia squad rider crashed at about 290 km / h. when a tire on his motorcycle broke, forcing a half-hour break in practice and also for Michelin to withdraw this type of soft compound from the Spanish team.
Along with Petrucci’s best time, the second place of the other pilot of the Avintia squad led by Raúl Romero stood out, as Héctor Barberá achieved a very good third position just under three tenths of a second behind the transalpine and just ahead of Marc Márquez (Repsol Honda RC 213 V), who improved considerably compared to the first day.
However, the more than seven tenths of a second that the Repsol Honda MotoGP double world champion finished are not a good reference in a circuit that has always been very good to the riders of the Japanese brand of the Golden Wing , although it obviously narrows the differences with respect to its rivals still with a long way to go.
The Italian Valentino Rossi (Yamaha YZR M1) also improved his records compared to the first day, but not to the same extent as his rivals, so he went from second place yesterday to sixth today a little less than a second behind his compatriot Petrucci.
One of the most interesting news of the day was the presence on the track, along with the rest of the riders, of the double MotoGP world champion (2007 and 2011), the Australian Casey Stoner, in his capacity as test rider for the Italian Ducati.
Stoner began the first minutes of training with the eleventh best time and midway through the day he moved to eighth position, barely a second behind Petrucci, although in the last minutes of training he was relegated to ninth place, with a good result after More than a year without getting on a motorcycle and more than two years without competing, even in practice, in the MotoGP category.
Due to the development of the training sessions and their results, it seems that the incorporation of the single electronic engine management unit balances the forces of the contestants much more, although practically all the teams are in the process of adapting to the itself, although the Ducati representatives seem to have a small advantage, since Magneti Marelli, the manufacturer of the same, is its technical supplier for years.
The first Suzuki GSX-RR, contrary to what happened yesterday with Aleix Espargaró, was on this occasion that of his teammate Mavercik Viñales, eleventh, just ahead of Dani Pedrosa (Repsol Honda RC 213 V), while Aleix finished sixteenth, with his brother Pol’s Yamaha YZR M 1 in fifteenth place.
The debutant of the category, Esteve «Tito» Rabat (Honda RC 213 V), continued with his adaptation to the category and to the motorcycle and therefore finished in seventeenth position, although after riding a second faster than on the day previous.
More compromising is the situation of Álvaro Bautista (Aprilia RS-GP), who in reality these tests are going to be of very little use, since the new MotoGP that the Italian manufacturer of Noale must make available to him is not yet operational and the The vast majority of the work that both he and his German teammate Stefan Bradl do in Sepang will be of little use to them. EFE
Petrucci takes over from Lorenzo on the table
