SUZUKI MotoGP continued its development of the GSX-RR at Sepang International Circuit in Malaysia today and moved ever-closer to the leading times.

Aleix Espargaro completed 57 laps with a best time of 2:00.409 for ninth on combined times and 0.565 seconds from leader Marc Marquez (Honda). Team mate Maverick Viñales recorded 61 laps with a best time of 2:00.731 which gave him 12th position overall, 0.887 seconds from the top.

Although Viñales suffered a small crash, no damage was suffered by rider or machine. Both riders continue to gain more confidence and set-ups of their machines and will continue tomorrow with some longer race simulations runs.

Davide Brivio – Team Manager:

“Today we have had another positive day because we could bring on our testing plan and we continued positively our learning process. The riders rode many laps today and this gave us the chance of discovering some issues on which we must work in order to be consistent in long runs like a race. Aleix in particular started a long run allowing us to collect important data, while Maverick continued to try some different set-up configurations and he’s learning fast how to feel the bike and give feedback to engineers. It’s a good thing to see that our times are good, closer and closer to the top. Tomorrow we will try further improvements but for the moment everything is going smoothly.”


Aleix Espargaro:

“I’m happy about the day, especially about the first part of the day. I found a good feeling from the very beginning and we immediately made good lap times. It is important to see that after five days here (including Sepang 1) we are getting closer and closer to the top.

“In the second part of the day we struggled a little with hotter conditions and we encountered some issue with the grip on the back so we need to work more on this. With my riding style I open the throttle early and when the tarmac gets hot we lose grip, so we need to fix it. The first part of the championship will not be in extremely hot weather conditions so we have time to find out a solution.

“We tried a race simulation, we had planned 17 laps in a row, but I had to give up a little earlier because my knee still hurts and I’m not at my 100%. However, the long run gave us important data. We still have two days to test, so we have time to work on the issues we are finding out.”

Maverick Viñales:

“It was another positive day. I did many laps and I’m becoming more-and-more familiar with the bike and the setting opportunities. I had a little crash but it wasn’t bad, I’m ok and so is the bike, I simply slid off.

“My main objective is still to find out the most effective riding style, even if we are introducing new technical modifications in every run to let me understand how the machine reacts to them. I also tried a small race simulation, just to start approaching the long runs, but tomorrow we will do more testing on this side.”

Sepang Day 1-2 Combined Times:


1 Marc Marquez (Honda) 1:59.844,
2 Jorge Lorenzo (Yamaha) 1:59.902,
3 Andrea Iannone (Ducati) 2:00.098,
4 Andrea Dovizioso (Ducati) 2:00. 250,
5 Dani Pedrosa (Honda) 2:00.275,
6 Valentino Rossi (Yamaha) 2:00.275.
9 Aleix Espargaro (SUZUKI MotoGP) 2:00.409.
12 Maverick Viñales (SUZUKI MotoGP) 2:00.731. 

Full results on MotoGP.com: HERE