The 2017 MotoGP World Championship officially began at the Sepang International Circuit in Malaysia on Monday and Suzuki’s Andrea Iannone and Alex Rins were busy on track getting their first taste of the updated GSX-RR machines following the long winter break.
The two riders were on different testing plans, according to their skills; the more-experienced Iannone trying some comparisons between the standard GSX-RR used in 2016 and the evolutions developed over the winter, while Rins was taking some time to get acquainted with the performance of a MotoGP machine, working on his riding style more than on machine’s improvements.
Both riders reported very positive feelings for their first day,
“For the moment everything is fine,” Iannone said. “Of course after a long break the main thing is to try to find back the confidence as quick as possible and find a good pace. We could already have some outcomes on the machines, it is very important to keep the comparative so we are working a lot switching the standard 2016 with the 2017 evolution one."
"We don’t have any decisions yet, of course, it’s long work that requires patience, but we’re happy with all the information we’ve collected. The relationship with the crew is very positive, everybody works really hard but the mood makes me very comfortable, I’d say my feeling now is really easy.”
Today’s work for the team was not focused on the timing, but was more on the technical development; the 2017 machine is not a completely new bike but the result of some updates to 2016.
This means that the work asked of the riders is mainly to get well acquainted with the standard machine to have solid references and then make any comparisons with the evolution bike, so that they can address the engineers’ work.
Being so early in the season the job is still a preliminary one, meant to define the direction for the future developments.
