Final day salvage for Pramac in Sepang

The final day of last week’s Sepang test was the best of the three for Pramac Racing, who took their workload in a new direction on Saturday and immediately enjoyed the benefits. A worrying opening two sessions gave way to a steady improvement on the fastest times of the week for the satellite team, courtesy of four big changes to the Desmosedici GP9 Sat.

”It has been a good day for us. Yesterday we couldn’t find a good feeling with the bike while today, also thanks to the hard work done by my technicians, we managed to solve the problems encountered yesterday to reduce our best lap time,” said rider Mika Kallio on Saturday afternoon, following his recording the ninth fastest lap of the day.

“We missed a bit of something to be even faster, but we can’t ask for everything straight away. We hope to continue in this direction also in the next test at the beginning of March in Qatar. We leave Sepang with enthusiasm for this new season.”

Times were of less importance to Kallio’s teammate Niccolo Canepa, who drew positives from a relatively problem-free first test of 2009.

“The lap time sheet doesn’t reflect the good work done today. I constantly rode in the high 2’03s without any problems and with tyres that we were using from many laps. I want to be clear that I am not satisfied with this lap time, but the most important thing of this first test of the year was to find a good feeling with the bike and so it has been,” emphasised the Italian rookie. “In the last minutes of the day I wanted to try to do a quick lap with new tyres, but the chequered flag stopped us. We will make up for it in Qatar.”

Full results from the final day in Sepang can be found here.