The second pre-season MotoGP testing session ended today in Phillip Island with a positive result for Alex Rins, who finished the day well into the top-10, his best lap time of 1:29.103s that putting him in sixth place overall for the day; the same as his three-day combined classification.
The growth shown by Rins and his crew saw positive results with the young Spaniard making progress with his riding style. This allowed him to consistently place in the higher section of the timesheets.
Steps forward were also taken in regard to his capability of understanding the machine as well as reporting feedback and directions to engineers, who were able to try several options to determine a correct development path for him. Despite a minor slide, he managed to get back on the bike immediately and regain his pace, which is an important and positive sign.
“The truth is that I’m very satisfied with these three days of testing. Apart from the best lap, the most important thing is that our progress during the sessions has been consistent and significant, cutting more than 2.3 seconds since Day One,” he said.
“We are able to better understand the machine and also develop a finer sensitivity with the settings and the changes. With my team, we are working very intensively, and this pays us back in the end. We still have many areas to improve, both in the GSX-RR and in my riding, but our ideas are getting clearer after each session.”
‘I also had a little crash today, but this didn’t affect my performance. I’m satisfied with these days and confident that we will be able to further improve.”
This test was slightly different from the last one in Sepang. In Malaysia the team put in some good lap times, but they left a lot of things untested. Here, they struggled more with the lap times but the work was very intense and they tried several different solutions.
“From my point of view, this is very important because we can bring back a great deal of information to Japan to develop some improvements for the Qatar test and eventually, the race,” explained Ken Kawauchi – Technical Manager. “For this reason, this test has been positive. We tried new cowlings and they proved to have positives and negatives that will have to be analysed."
"We also tried different swing arms and set-ups, finding important indicators. Alex did quite a good job; very consistent in the lap-time and often into the top-10 which means he is progressing well and gives us good hopes for further improvements.”
