Ducati Corse’s Jorge Lorenzo says that he is happy with his day’s work at the Sepang pre-season test after taking major strides in his understanding of the Desmosedici GP17 following a troublesome first day on Tuesday.
The Spaniard was well over a second off of the pace set by Ducati test rider Casey Stoner at the end of yesterday’s session down in 17th, and this took him by surprise. After impressing in the Valencia test and feeling comfortable on the bike, Lorenzo did not expect to struggle as much as he did in Sepang.
The double MotoGP world champion found that he was braking way too early, a legacy of how he maximised the cornering performance of the YZR-M1 over the past nine years, and giving away too much time. This was never an issue at the Ricardo Tormo Circuit last year as it lacks any big braking areas.
Knowing that he simply needed more track time in order to adjust his style to the GP17, Lorenzo did just that today while also making small improvements to the set-up of the bike. The Spaniard lapped the 5.5km Sepang International Circuit 66 times today, managing a best effort of 2m00.484s to go eighth on the time sheets and just four hundredths of a second off of team-mate Andrea Dovizioso’s fastest lap.
Though pleased to now be heading in the right direction, the Ducati rider does admit that he still has a long way to go before reaching his true potential on the Desmosedici.
“I’m very happy with the progress we made today,” Lorenzo stated. “Now I understand the bike a lot more and I managed to improve my performance, even though I’m still some way from my limit.
“We also improved the general set-up of the Desmosedici GP and in addition I could see that what I thought yesterday was correct: I only need a bit more time and to do a lot of laps to get even closer to the top and to my limit with this bike.”
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