Misano MotoGP Test Wrap Up
Repsol Honda, Team Ducati and Team Suzuki spent this week testing in sweltering conditions at Misano, near the city of Rimini. Track temperatures as high as 61 celsius were recorded while the ambient registered 36.
Evaluations were run on the new surface of the circuit, which was originally completed in 1972 and has since undergone an array of modifications. And after the passing of Marco Simoncelli in 2011 the circuit was renamed Misano World Circuit “Marco Simoncelli”.
A regular scene for Italian Grands Prix throughout the 80s and early 90s, Misano then returned to the MotoGP calendar in 2007. This year Misano will host round 13 of the 2015 MotoGP World Championship on the weekend of September 13.
While Suzuki and Ducati wrapped up on Thursday, Repsol Honda still have one more day at the 4.2 kilometre circuit where they will test and evaluate the latest development specification Michelin tyres, with MotoGP set to run exclusively on the French rubber from season 2016.
Marc Marquez was quickest during the first two dyas of the test, where all riders ran on the current specification Bridgestone rubber. Both Marquez and Dani Pedrosa spent time not only on their current 2015 RC213V, but also put time in onboard a prototype 2016 machine.
Marquez completed a total of 86 laps with a best time of 1’32.00. Dani did 71 laps with his best time of 1’32.66.
Marc Marquez – Misano MotoGP Test – July 2015 – 1m32.00 – 170 laps – “I’m happy with these past two days, we have done a great job on the setup and now I feel more comfortable. Especially this morning when the temperature was a little bit lower we were able to find something that has improved my feeling and now we will have to see if this will work also in the coming circuits. I also tried the 2016 prototype finding something good, but we will test it again tomorrow with next year’s tyres to give the HRC engineers more data to work with. In the afternoon the track temperature was really too hot, but I am happy with the pace I was able to keep even in these circumstances. A big thanks to HRC and my team for the great job done! Tomorrow one more tough day and then we will deserve some days off!”
Dani Pedrosa- Misano MotoGP Test – July 2015 – 1m32.66 – 134 laps – “It’s been two hard but productive days of testing. We are happy as we have been able to work a lot on the current bike to find a setup that can be a good base for the coming GPs. It has been a very hard job as the temperature was really hot but I am happy. I also did a couple of exits with the prototype of the 2016 bike. It was important to give to the engineers some feedback about the direction we are heading. Tomorrow we will test it again with 2016 tyres as this bike will have to work on them!”
Ducati’s Andrea Dovizioso was quicker than Pedrosa, but half-a-second behind Marquez.
Along with teammae Andrea Iannone, the two Ducati factory riders devoted themselves to back-to-back comparisons of a variety of different set-up solutions on the still young GP15 machine.
Andrea Dovizioso – Misano MotoGP Test – July 2015 – 1m32.5 – 132 laps – “These two days of testing at Misano have been really useful, because we were able to do the set-up testing work that we were interested in. During race weekends, we never have the right amount of time to devote ourselves to this. We worked on fine-tuning, both the electronics and the set-up, and our pace is not bad at all: my quickest lap I did this morning with a used tyre, but in the afternoon it was really very hot and we didn’t try to improve our times, and even avoided using the soft tyres.”
Dovizioso stayed out on track until the end of the afternoon session, notching up a total of 132 laps in two days, while Iannone’s day was brought to an end at lunchtime due to a flaring up again of the pain in his left shoulder, which he injured during pre-race testing at Mugello.
Andrea Iannone – Misano MotoGP Test – July 2015 – 1m32.7 – 101 laps – “In one and a half days of testing, we only used a total of three tyres, all hard compound, and even this morning I never used soft tyres. Despite this we improved our pace over yesterday by more than half a second. This is important for us and I am pleased with how we went. I’m just disappointed I had to finish the test early, but unfortunately from this morning onwards my shoulder was hurting really bad and I was unable to lap quickly or push hard. Today however I had some good sensations on the bike, we did a good job and picked up a lot of important information for the future.”
Ducati Test Team rider Michele Pirro was also present at Misano, and he continued his regular development work, focussing mainly on electronics.
Aleix Espargarò and Maverick Viñales continued the development of their Suzuki GSX-RRs and their engineers had the chance to verify all the information collected to date, and along with the progress made so far, it is going in the right direction, they believe.
At the same time both Spaniards tried new settngs and set-ups that will be put into action at future races this season; in particular Misano in September. The chassis set-up and electronics are the two main areas on which the team focused; trying several variations aimed at providing better traction and a better power delivery.
Satoru Terada – Misano MotoGP Test – July 2015 – Suzuki MotoGP Project Leader – “This test has been very important to us, it allowed us to try all the things that we usually cannot try in the race weekend and it gave us some very important information. We focused mainly on finding a better way of approaching the chassis set-up, to find better traction. Both the riders improved their feelings with the bike and this is positive. To have more information is crucial for us and we also managed to finalise more options that we can exploit to find the base set-up in every race from here on. We also tried some improvements in electronics to improve the feeling with the power delivery and it gave positive results. We now have clearer ideas on where our main potential is and which are the areas that we can exploit most. We will try to take benefit from this for the second half of the season.”
Maverick Viñales – Misano MotoGP Test – July 2015 – 1m32.7 – 166 laps – “I have the feeling that this test has been very useful for us, we understand better where we can improve and we have worked to prepare for the forthcoming races. I did many laps in a sort of race configuration with a full tank and dedicated set-up, and I felt better –and-better on every run. At the beginning I had a bad feeling with traction on the exit but also had trouble with being fast on the entrance into slow corners. We applied many improvements to the chassis and they gave positive results. Now we have many options that we already know can be useful or be adapted to every single circuit. For the feeling that I have now I wish Indy was next week, because with these improvements I feel very comfortable on my machine, but we also need some time to take a rest and – most importantly – to review all the data and consolidate our information.”
Aleix Espargarò – Misano MotoGP Test – July 2015 – 1m32.8 – 131 laps – “The extremely hot weather conditions made this testing very hard, but I’m very happy for what we achieved. After Sachsenring it was important to get back some feeling with the front, especially in slow corners, and we could finally test several set-up configurations that at the end gave me very positive feelings. We have also improved with the electronics and worked in race configuration, verifying the consistency of performance with hard tyres, even though we didn’t make any long runs or race simulations. The machine is reacting very well, the feeling I have is positive and the most important thing is that we could find different ways to approach the future races and set-up situations. This is important for a new team as we are. Now we switch off the mind for a while and enjoy a little break, but to be honest I’m looking forward to starting racing again because I feel the need to recover from the bad performance in Sachsenring.”
Davide Brivio – Misano MotoGP Test – July 2015 – Suzuki MotoGP Team Manager – “One of the positives of this test is that both riders can now go on vacation with a positive mood and feeling: They both worked very hard in this heat and they both found a new feeling with their machines. It was important for us to take a break and analyse exactly where we are at the half-way point in the season, since we lacked some data that we needed time to dedicate away from a racing weekend, to better understand where we are and where we can go. To have further options for the overall set-up and electronics is crucial for the development and on this matter we made a huge step forward.”
