You may have been in the paddock for 40 years and have created your competition team for more than 30, but you still remain a beginner when you line up for the first time in a new category as competitive as Moto3.
This is the situation that Hervé Poncharal's French Red Bull KTM Tech3 team has just experienced with a little stress with its two drivers for the first day of IRTA 2020 testing on the Jerez de la Frontera circuit.
After two days of private testing on the Andalusian circuit, Monday and Tuesday of this week, Deniz Öncü et Ayumu Sasaki therefore faced their opponents for the first time in an official session with satisfactory weather conditions despite the wind which picked up during the afternoon.
At the end of the three sessions, the semi-beginner (5 GP last year) Deniz Oncu achieved his best lap in 1'45.560, which allowed him to finish this first day in 16th position after completing 65 laps.
At the same time, Ayumu Sasaki, who still has to forget "Honda driving" a little and preferred not to ride in a final session that was generally slower, managed to cross the 1'47 mark to be only 0,263 seconds behind his teammate.
Deniz Oncu : “We did the first test of the year starting this Monday with the all-new KTM. This bike is very different from last year, so my task has been to adapt and understand it. With each ride and each lap it worked better. Little by little, my feeling progressed. I really like the bike at the moment, because KTM has improved the chassis a lot over the winter. I was also faster, we improved the bike and overall I feel very good. We have two more days of testing here and the goal is to be faster every day, so I'm really happy with our work so far. »
Ayumu Sasaki : “We had two days of testing before the IRTA test, which was almost the first time I rode the KTM bike, after a rain test in November where I just did a few laps with a broken hand. On the first day, it wasn't easy to get back in shape after the long break, but the team did a great job helping me. We took a big step on the first day and improved by almost 1,5 seconds on the second day. Today we gained more than half a second again, and that's huge. We did a good job again today, but towards the end we got to a point where we had to check the data and try to find out what was going on, to figure out what I could improve on and what we can do to improve on the bike. I hope tomorrow and Friday can be even better. »
The “deflowering” has therefore taken place, and in a very honorable manner, and now “all that remains is”… For example, wait for the 2020 engines, available only in Qatar.
Ayumu Sasaki, Moto3 test, Jerez, February 2020
