After the well deserved podium earned at the Catalunya GP, allowing him to maintain his joint lead in the classification, Casey Stoner yesterday returned to the same track, despite his weariness, to participate in a post-race test session.
The Australian rider was still feeling weak and under the weather, so much so as to have to terminate the testing two hours early, having completed just 38 laps, but he was nonetheless satisfied with the work that was completed with the GP9.
“This morning, when I woke up, I had some cramp in my legs and a backache so I did some physiotherapy con Freddy (Dente, the team's physiotherapist) and then got on the bike. I was not in perfect shape and I couldn't make more than a couple of runs at a time”, he explained. “Despite this, we managed to test what we needed to test, the set-up of the bike, the carbon fork and a new rear shock. I'm fairly happy because the test has confirmed what we thought and I think we are improving bit by bit. We are still lacking some rear grip but we we've found a few ways to improve the bike and I am optimistic. Now I'm looking forward to resting and to getting back to 100% fitness in time for Assen.”
Nicky Hayden barely got off his bike but was still unable to get the maximum from the latest updates for his machine. Nevertheless, his team were able to collect a great amount of data and this will be analysed in order to give Nicky the best possible chance at Assen so that he can develop on the progress made over the Catalunya race weekend.
“It wasn't the day I had hoped for, seeing the progress we had made over the weekend”, he said. “In Saturday morning's practice, when it was a little cooler and the conditions were similar to those of today, I lapped in 1m43.6 while here today I haven't gone under 1m44 and right from the start I didn't have the same feeling as I had over the weekend. I don't know why, also because we worked so hard, but I hope that the data collected is of use to the engineers so we can prepare well for Assen.”
Source: http://uk.eurosport.yahoo.com