Bastinini Leads Breaks Track Record To Lead Sepang Test

Calum Gill 12:02 06/02/2022

Gresini's Enea Bastianini set a new unofficial MotoGP lap record at Sepang, as rain effectively shortened the two-day test by several hours. 

Light drizzle showed up around the halfway point of Sunday’s running to prompt an initial disruption, before heavier rainfall made any more representative slick-tyre running untenable until the chequered flag. By then, however, each rider in the field had already improved on their Saturday laptime, and the top 11 all slotted in within just three tenths of the new fastest-ever MotoGP lap at Sepang. That lap, a 01:58.131, was recorded by Bastianini, campaigning a 2021 Ducati this year after having run a two-year-old bike for Avintia the previous season. The Italian was 0.026 seconds up on Aprilia’s Saturday pace-setter Aleix Espargaró, who likewise went below the previous unofficial lap record – held by Danilo Petrucci since testing in 2019.

Jorge Martín (Pramac Ducati), Álex Rins (Suzuki), Maverick Viñales (Aprilia) and early 2022 favourite Francesco Bagnaia (Ducati) made up a top six split by just 0.134 seconds, with Rins and Viñales setting identical times. Rins’s team-mate Joan Mir was only 12th, but still just four tenths off the pace and ending the test perfectly content with what he’d seen from the 2022 Suzuki. Reigning champion Fabio Quartararo, who conceded on Saturday the power gains he’d desired from Yamaha for 2022 have not come to fruition, finished two tenths off in seventh – and was nearly a second up on the rest of the Yamaha contingent, with its four other rides finishing between 21st and 25th.

Works Honda riders Marc Márquez and Pol Espargaró were eighth and 10th, a tenth apart and with Pramac Ducati’s Johann Zarco between them. VR46 Ducati rider Luca Marini made it five Ducatis in the top 11, having been compromised by an unspecified issue for much of Saturday. In 16th place, Marini’s team-mate Marco Bezzecchi was once again the top rookie, albeit suffering an early fall. There was also a crash during the day for LCR Honda’s Takaaki Nakagami. KTM was the slowest of the five marques, led by Miguel Oliveira in 15th, albeit its riders didn’t show any obvious concern, having focused on aero and electronics work and without yet putting together its full baseline RC16 package for the start of the season. 

Though, naturally, no laptime improvements were possible in the closing hours of the test, there was extensive wet-weather running, including for most of the rookies, who got their first taste of riding MotoGP machinery equipped with Michelin wets. The only exception was Tech3 KTM’s Remy Gardner, who is still nursing an injured right wrist and felt he was in no shape to continue after extensive mileage through the test and preceding shakedown. MotoGP pre-season testing will now continue at the new Indonesian venue Mandalika on February 11-13.