News MotoGP.com

Ads

MotoGP ShakeDown Sepang J3: falls, raindrops, and Aprilia wins!

by | February 3, 2019

Un burn-in without transponders the first day then very honorable chronometric references led by Pol Espargaró on his KTM during the second day: this third and final opus of ShakeDown MotoGP 2019 was awaited with all the more impatience as certain riders, like Jonas Folger (Yamaha) or Aleix Espargaró (Aprilia), had waited for it to make their comeback.

Wanting to take advantage of the relative coolness of the morning, the drivers wasted no time in taking to the track today, starting with Bradley Smith (Aprilia) and Takuya Tsuda (Suzuki), and, after barely half an hour, the hierarchy presented itself in the form Pol I will espargaro (KTM), Aleix I will espargaro (Aprilia), Michele Pirro (Dozens), Miguel Oliveira (KTM), Katsuyuki Nakasuga (yamaha), Bradley Smith (Aprilia), John Zarco (KTM), Takuya Tsuda (Suzuki), Mika Kallio (KTM) and Hafizh Syahrin (KTM), while Jonas Folger (Yamaha) waited a bit before setting off.

In terms of times, we notice that Pol Espargaró immediately returned to his level from the day before, with a 2'00.889 at the end of the first hour, compared to 2'00.812 yesterday.

As a reminder, the official circuit record is 1'59.053, to the credit of Dani Pedrosa since 2015, but the best time of the 2018 IRTA tests in 1'58.830 was achieved by Jorge Lorenzo on his Ducati.

Shortly after the first hour, and while Michele Pirro had just hoisted his Ducati to 3 tenths of Pol Espargaró, the session is interrupted by red flags, following the fall of a Yamaha R1 Superbike.

On resumption, Aleix Espargaró regains his second position and is less than 3 tenths behind his brother, before a second red light interrupts the session again. This time, it is the M1 of Katsuyuki Nakasuga which is brought back in a trailer. It seems to have strange fins...

At the reopening, the two Aprilia riders ride together and have fun surpassing each other while at KTM, it's a fairing waltz since each of the 5 riders present has already tried the new aerodynamic appendages.

In terms of time, things are not changing much because the track is at 56° at the time of the lunch break.

It's Suzuki, we take the opportunity to ride Bradley Ray on the GSX-RR Sylvain Guintoli, but only with tires derived from the series, since Michelin MotoGP tires are limited to 120 units for each test team, for the year.

//www.instagram.com/embed.js

This is not the reason why Andrea Iannone will not have ridden the Aprilia at this ShakeDown, but the Italian seems to be suffering from a toothache and prefers to wait for the official tests which will begin on Wednesday. At Honda, Stefan bradl does not ride either, preferring to save energy for the 3 days of testing to come, replacing Jorge Lorenzo.

Shortly before 15 p.m., the rain which, until then, had miraculously not shown the tip of its nose, refreshed the track with a few scattered drops.

The coating barely dried, Aleix Espargaró imposes his Aprilia in 2'00.824, and it will be necessary to wait until the last half hour for his brother Pol to take back command on the handlebars of his KTM in 2'00.666, or 1 tenth of his best time of 2018 (2'00.513 during FP3). It was without taking into account the rivalry between the two brothers, and in the end it is indeed the Aprilia ofAleix Espargaró which turns out to be the fastest, in 2'00.500.

In the end, it is difficult to draw conclusions from this ShakeDown because everyone had their own test program and the times displayed only reflect performance at a given moment and in particular conditions (track temperature, new tires, time attack or not, etc.). However, we see that we are not remaining idle at KTM and Aprilia, where the machines performed very well during this burn-in. So much the better ! We can only hope that this continues during the 3 days of official testing which will begin on Wednesday, despite the arrival of all the MotoGP stars, and it will obviously be a different story...

Last lesson from this ShakeDown, the hierarchy at KTM seems well established for the moment, with Pol Espargaró, Johann Zarco, Miguel Oliveira and Hafizh Syahrin. Also follow the evolution of the gaps in 3 days, since they visibly tend to tighten over the sessions...

Finally, but we will come back to this, these first tests were marked by a strong desire for discretion on the part of the Team Test Yamaha...

Next on Wednesday for the first day of IRTA tests, at the same times (3:00 a.m. – 11:00 a.m.)…

Photo credits (and our thanks): Peter McLaren / crash.net