SEPANG: Honda’s Dani Pedrosa set the pace yesterday, the final day of the second MotoGP test at Sepang, while his new team-mate Marc Marquez took second on a slippery circuit.

The gap between the two Spanish riders was just 0.081s and the pair edged out their traditional Yamaha rivals, Jorge Lorenzo and Valentino Rossi.

After heavy overnight downpours, top riders including Lorenzo, Pedrosa, Marquez and Rossi earlier in the day had a chance to test their bikes’ handling on a damp track on wet-weather tyres.

Conditions vastly improved in the afternoon, and Pedrosa took advantage by pushing his bike hard for a total of 57 laps to notch the fastest time of 2:00.562s.

Lorenzo, a double MotoGP champion, came in third 0.430s off the pace.

Marquez has been consistently fast since the first pre-season test sessions at Sepang three weeks ago.

The MotoGP rookie continued to make impressive progress despite crashing twice in the day.

He was unhurt.

Lorenzo’s team-mate, nine-time world champion Valentino Rossi, was fourth at 2:01.062s.

Spain’s Alvaro Bautista on a Honda was fifth while British Yamaha rider Cal Crutchlow took sixth.

Pedrosa, 27, who is in top form and hungry for a MotoGP title, topped the timesheets during both test sessions this month, apart from on Wednesday when Lorenzo took the honours.

While track conditions this week were a little worse than early this month, he said they allowed him to learn more about the bike’s performance.

“We did a good test overall. The basics of the bike is quite good,” Pedrosa said. — AFP

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