With the triptych of three consecutive races on the Pacific Tour now behind us, that gives us a little more time to try to satisfy our insatiable curiosity...
And the opportunity was so good to be able to compare the times achieved during the winter tests at Sepang to those achieved during the Grand Prix tests.
How have things evolved in eight months, after a lot of acclimatization of the drivers to the category and, sometimes, many changes of chassis and/or aerodynamic appendages?
First of all, it should be noted that our table has no claim to demonstrate anything, except for us and to allow you to possibly draw some simple hypotheses from it...
The times in black are those achieved during the three days of testing while those in color (green in the event of improvement, red in the event of deterioration) are those achieved during the qualifying sessions for the Grand Prix.
Further to the right are the differences with those achieved during testing and, finally, we have ranked the drivers from best progress to worst deterioration.
Who has progressed the most?
With more than a second to spare, Espargaro Pol is undoubtedly the one who has benefited the most from the progress of the KTM, also confirmed by the improvement in Bradley Smith.
Tito Rabat also seems to have experienced a turning point at the end of the season, while the half-second nibbled away by Johann zarco is undoubtedly the fruit of his acclimatization to the category.
Amounting to 3/10, the improvement of Dani Pedrosa is not negligible, just like those of the two official Ducatis even if, in this respect, one could have expected that Jorge Lorenzo progresses more thanAndrea Dovizioso...
With very small deviations, we then enter a zone that we consider to be insignificant, until we arrive at the regressions of Cal Crutchlow (453/1000) and the following which are Andrea Iannone (667 / 1000), Alvaro Bautista (841 / 1000), Hector Barbera (1061/1000) and Karel Abraham (1125/1000)!
This table poses more questions than it answers, starting with the tires used, but we'll try to answer some of them after the Valencia Grand Prix...
PS: do not hesitate to point out any errors in our table, we are only human! 🙂
