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***Malcolm*** · 23-02-2015, 05:10 PM

Without a even a chance to catch their breath after the exciting Sunday on Phillip Island where Aprilia made its triumphant entry into the 2015 WSBK season, they were off to three days of testing on the fast Malaysian track, which represent the penultimate step before the start of the 2015 MotoGP World Championship.

Aprilia Racing Team Gresini resumed work developing the bike which had already been launched with the tests and Jerez and Valencia last autumn and then with the first test sessions at Sepang, bringing new solutions and materials to the track which had been developed by the racing department at Noale over the last few weeks.

Alvaro Bautista and Marco Melandri focused primarily on testing the intermediate versions of the bikes tested in Spain and the ones seen in the first Malaysian session.
The tests were decidedly encouraging for Bautista who, besides benefiting from the great job done by the Aprilia Racing mechanics, also had the satisfaction of a good time to finish out the test sessions - which were in fact called off early due to a couple of rainstorms - stopping the clock at 2'01,740 and climbing to 12th place.

Marco Melandri worked hard, as did his team mate (42 laps for Marco and 51 for Alvaro), putting higher times on the sheets (2:04,000) where were both the result of the rider from Ravenna becoming more at ease in the MotoGP class after years of SBK, and the many solutions tested, obviously without focusing on individual lap performance.

ALVARO BAUTISTA

"We are continuing to grow little by little and I think we can be satisfied with our progress. The positive thing is that we have already improved our times since Sepang1. So we are working well and we need to keep it up. For the first day today we focused on the electronics, trying to solve a few issues that had come up during the previous tests. We also tested a frame with a different stiffness to specifically try and improve performance going into turns. Unfortunately this afternoon the rain kept us from testing other setups."

MARCO MELANDRI

"Testing a different frame today I had some promising feelings. We are obviously still far from our goals, but I felt less awkward in the saddle and that gives us something we can work with. For me in these test sessions my feeling with this bike is the most fundamental aspect, without placing too much importance on lap times. We need time and we need to keep testing to choose which direction to go. Today we laid the first brick. Now we just have to keep working patiently."

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