Gresini Racing Sepang test day 2 report

ANOTHER POSITIVE DAY FOR TEAM SAN CARLO HONDA GRESINI

The second day of preseason testing at Sepang saw both Team San Carlo Honda Gresini riders on the pace with the very best in the category, apart from a stunning lap time from Dani Pedrosa. The pair got through a great deal of work and were delighted at their speed. Marco Simoncelli made further improvements to his consistency, riding with trademark determination, with his Japanese team-mate Hiroshi Aoyama also making extremely positive progress. Tomorrow "Super Sic" plans to complete a race simulation whilst Aoyama will aim to improve his consistency.

Marco Simoncelli (5th 2'01" 522 42 laps) "I am really happy with today and, apart from the 'stratospheric' time set by Pedrosa, in race set-up I have been consistently amongst the best. We have improved the set-up compared to yesterday and experimented with some different electronic solutions. I can say that the base set-up of the bike is good and everybody, myself and the team, is finding that with more experience we are able to consolidate our work more. Last year when we spoke with the telemetry engineer from Honda we were struggling to understand but now everything is easier. After a positive first test at Valencia this is good confirmation for us at a track I have never really been fast at. So I am confident about the future and tomorrow we will try a race simulation, my physical condition permitting of course because as usual here in Malaysia the heat is tremendous!"

Hiroshi Aoyama (6th 2'01" 534 58 laps) "Today we opted to use a soft tyre to try and improve the set-up. I rode both bikes and we tried a number of different settings on each to make back to back comparisons with the balance and things like that. At the start of the day I was struggling a little but by the end we had improved and I could have maybe even pushed a little harder. I have improved my best lap time from yesterday so that is a positive thing and tomorrow we will look for more consistency using the combined settings from the things we found with each bike today."

Fausto Gresini "Another positive and gratifying day. Simoncelli continues to show good form and is now consistently lapping with the fastest guys out there, whilst Aoyama has been a pleasant surprise for us. He need the right stimulation and I think our team is helping him to find it."