Suzuki Completes Day 1 Of MotoGP Testing In Sepang

From a Suzuki press release:

Suzuki MotoGP has completed a positive first day of testing at the Sepang International Circuit in Malaysia as the team prepares for a full factory comeback to the 2015 MotoGP World Championship.

Team riders Aleix Espargaro and Maverick Vinales both made steps forward with new chassis and engine refinements on the 2015 GSX-R MotoGP machine in dry conditions at the 5.543km circuit as track temperatures reached 50 degrees during the first of three-days of testing alongside all the 2015 MotoGP teams.

Espargaro completed a total of 46 laps today, improving his times during each session and setting a best-lap of 2:02.225 on his 42nd circuit, while Vinales used his time to post 69 laps with a best time of 2:03.164 on his 58th-lap.

Aleix Espargaro:

“I am very happy to get back on the bike again after a long winter period and this is what I like a lot. Although I’m not too much happy with my fitness right now, as I could only train really hard during last 10 days because of my injury, I’m not 100% yet. But this should not be a big problem as we have plenty of time before the first race in Qatar. Regarding the bike, I like it a lot and it is working really well; plus we also have good grip. Of course we need a lot more testing to obtain the best set-up, but for the moment we also know that our main target is to improve the power. We need to be patient because it will not be so easy, but regarding the current situation, I think that the gap in lap-times between us and our main rivals is not a great issue.”

Maverick Vinales:

“It was a good day and I’m quite happy. We still have many things to work-through on the bike and also myself as it was my first ride after three months, but as it was only the first day, it was important for me to get back my feeling on the bike first. The bike was quite similar compared to the one I tested in Valencia, although I felt a great improvement with anti-wheelie system; which was much smoother than before. The important target here is to get a good pace going and that I’ll keep trying to give my best.”

Davide Brivio – Team Manager:

“Today was a positive day because we had some good confirmation and had no technical troubles. This is something that our engineers have been working-though during the winter in Japan for improving the reliability, and we are glad that we had a good response today on this side. We also had the riders very excited to go back on the bike with huge motivation – and we just started with both of them to work for the settings including electronic issue targeting to the start of the season ahead. Today was a kick-off for this season’s testing, but it was also like a running-in day for us and we are quite happy with today.”

Sepang MotoGP Test Times (Day 1): 1 Marc Marquez (Honda) 2:00.262, 2 Valentino Rossi (Yamaha) 2:00.380, 3 Jorge Lorenzo (Yamaha) 2:00.521, 4 Andrea Dovizioso (Ducati) 2:00.521, 5 Dani Pedrosa (Honda) 2:00.745, 6 Pol Espargaro (Yamaha) 2:00.930. 14 Aleix Espargaro (SUZUKI MotoGP) 2:02.225. 21 Maverick Vinales (SUZUKI MotoGP) 2:03.164.