MOTOGP

Bautista’s best lap time of 2’00.848 was 1.3s slower than the marker set down by World Champion Marc Marquez in the previous Sepang test. Of course Marquez is absent from this Malaysian outing due to a leg injury sustained in training last week. The track surface at Sepang has been described variously as dirty, slippery and lacking in grip compared to the 4 th -6 th February session due to recent weather conditions. Nonetheless the riders and teams carried out crucial development and data gathering exercises on Wednesday in the tropical heat, with pace man Bautista working heavily with the rear of his GO&FUN Honda Gresini bike. He aims to dial in the new hard rear Bridgestone tyre to his package – examining shock, swingarm and linkage configuration this week. Another solid day of work from Aleix Espargaro left him in second, just 0.052s from his compatriot Bautista, having featured at the top for several spells late in the day. Espargaro and his fellow r...

Following his departure from the Yamaha Factory Racing team at the end of 2013, after 14 highly fruitful years of working with Valentino Rossi, former Crew Chief Jeremy Burgess has opened up to CycleNews.com in an in-depth interview. Amongst several revealing comments, the Australian mechanic said, “At the age of 35 Rossi won’t be gaining many new fans this season. Right now the 10 year-olds are putting up Marc Marquez posters on their bedroom walls.” He also commented, “Valentino loves the whole process of going racing and enjoys the riding almost as much as winning. To me it’s all about winning so to stay there in MotoGP to go through that experience of not winning is a vastly different world to what I’ve lived in for the past 34 years.”

Mika Kallio posted the fastest time as the Jerez Moto2™ test drew to a close on Thursday - in the process registering the best lap of the week The Marc VDS Racing Team rider – who during the day was focusing on clutch settings - went ahead with his leading time of 1’42.169, edging out team-mate Tito Rabat by just 64 thousandths of a second. However, this only happened once thick fog had lifted from the Andalucian venue, which in the morning had witnessed extremely poor visibility and for that reason little track action. In the case of Rabat, the Spaniard was unable to complete a race simulation as he struggling with direction change at the 4.4-kilometre circuit. Third was the consistent Tom Luthi, with the Interwetten Paddock Moto2 rider only a further 21 thousandths adrift as less than one tenth of a second covered the top three, promising for a tightly-contested World Championship season once again. The Swiss was not completely happy either, though, suff...