Loris Capirossi and Sete Gibernau both hit the front on final day of
three-day test at Sepang.
The tropical rainstorm
that put paid to yesterday's session for all the MotoGP teams present at
Sepang made way for excellent weather for the final day of testing.
The Ducati Marlboro Team engineers and riders were able to put in a full
day's work and Loris Capirossi and Sete Gibernau ended up at the top of
the unofficial timesheets, both on race and on qualifying tyres.
Sete Gibernau worked hard to reach a total feeling with his Ducati. The
Spanish rider, after getting to grips with the GP6, today also completed
six laps with the GP5, confirming yesterday's impressions from his
team-mate.
With the GP6 successfully completing its roll-out test, the natural
life-cycle of the Ducati Desmosedici GP5 has now come to an end at the
Sepang track, where Capirossi set pole and took the win in the 2005
Malaysian GP.
Sete Gibernau (73 laps - 2m01.83s race, 2m01.03s qualifying);
"My settling-in period with the team, the bike and the tyres is
continuing and I am increasingly satisfied with the choice that I have
made. Today I felt pretty good on the GP6 and I also wanted to do a few
laps on the GP5, which I have never tried, to make a back-to-back test.
This confirmed what Loris, who knows the bike well, had said yesterday:
the GP5 is a good bike but the GP6 has more development potential and
from now onwards we are only going to use that bike. For the first time
I used Bridgestone's qualifying tyres and they gave me a good feeling.
We've still got a lot of work to do to be at 100% but we are on the
right path".
On the final day of the session, Loris Capirossi focussed on getting
through an intense programme of tyre testing, accumulating information
that will be useful for the next session scheduled for Sepang.
Loris Capirossi (76 laps - 2m01.64s race, 2m01.08s qualifying);
"We can also be satisfied with today's performance. The weather was good
all day and we were able to do all the scheduled tyre testing.
Bridgestone are working well and we have gathered a lot of useful
information for the next test session here at Sepang. I also tried the
new qualifying tyres, which have a good potential. I like the GP6 more
and more and I can't wait to test it in Australia, where last year I
only did a few laps on the Friday morning before crashing, which forced
me to miss the Australian and Turkish GPs".
The next test for the Ducati Marlboro Team will be from January 31st to
February 2nd, at Phillip Island in Australia, the second scheduled 2006
winter session.
