Courtesy of LCR Honda Team
| With back-to-back races at the Misano World Circuit Marco Simoncelli, MotoGP teams took advantage of the opportunity to take part in a vital one-day test at the Italian circuit on Tuesday. Having finished ninth in last Sunday’s first race, LCR Honda IDEMITSU’s Taka Nakagami was confident of making significant improvement in race two this coming weekend, as he ended up the test session in second place overall. As the top Honda runner in the championship, the Japanese star was also handed the opportunity to test the 2020 version of the Honda RC213V in the morning. He used his current race version to set his fast time however, which bodes well for the Emilia Romagna GP which begins at Misano on Friday. Takaaki Nakagami – 2nd (1’31.803 – lap 29 of 31) |
| “This morning I had the opportunity to get a taster of the 2020 RC213V, the test bike used by Stefan Bradl. I didn’t do too many laps, it was just a first taste but it was quite good. We tried to understand the bike a bit, but unfortunately I had a crash at turn one because I got a big impact off the bumps and I lost the front. It was quite a simple crash, but then we went back to our bike to work on the set-up for this weekend. “We tested many items, and definitely we have improved from last weekend. I can say that we are now at a really competitive level on all laps, and even a qualifying lap too. I got into the 1’31 bracket for the first time and ended the day P2 so I’m pretty happy about that. That should mean we are competitive this weekend. We still will have work to do, because whenever you test there is always a lot of grip on the track. Anyway, we are definitely heading in the right direction and we have a good base for Misano race two.” |