Kawasaki's John Hopkins continued to improve his lap time during the second
day of testing at a blisteringly hot Sepang circuit. The Anglo-American was just
over half-a-second off the fastest time today, but is confidently predicting
that this gap will be much reduced once he gets the chance tomorrow to dial in
further the set-up of his Ninja ZX-RR.
Hopkins's Kawasaki teammate, Anthony West, will be looking for the same level
of improvement on the final day of testing, after a successful morning that saw
his lap time tumbling with every run aboard the 2008 Ninja ZX-RR.
Both riders worked their way through an intensive tyre testing program with
Bridgestone while conditions were good this morning, before switching back to
working on the set-up and evaluation of chassis and suspension components as
track temperatures soared and grip levels dropped during the afternoon
session.
West identified a front tyre and rim combination that gave him more
confidence in the front end of the bike, as he pushed to close the time gap on
his more experienced teammate. The Australian will continue with the same
combination tomorrow when he hopes to see another significant improvement in his
lap time, before the Kawasaki Racing Team head for his home circuit in Australia
for the next round of testing.
Hopkins focussed mainly on evaluating rear tyres that may prove suitable for
use at the first race in Qatar, which is likely to be run under similar
conditions as experienced today in Sepang. The 24-year-old Kawasaki rider ended
the test confident that the tyre data acquired today would allow Bridgestone to
identify the best combination of construction, profile and compound for the
unique demands of the Qatar circuit.
The final day of testing tomorrow promises to be a punishing one for both
riders, with race simulation runs scheduled in the morning and further work on
machine set-up planned for the afternoon.
John Hopkins:
"We started out this morning by running through some tyres that
Bridgestone have brought here, basically to try and identify what will work for
the first race of the season in Qatar. It was a useful test, I felt pretty
comfortable on the bike and I think it will stand us in good stead come Qatar.
We've also continued the evaluation of the two chassis options we have here, and
at the moment we've gone with the one closest to the 2007 spec. The other
chassis option has some positive points, but we need to do some more work on a
few areas before we go with it on the race bike. The engineers will now take
this chassis back to Japan, together with the data on it that we've collected,
and I guess we will be testing further revisions pretty soon. Tomorrow I'll do a
long distance run, and then we'll be looking to refine the set-up of the bike to
suit my personal preferences, which I'm looking forward to."
Anthony West:
"This morning we kept the changes to a minimum and I just concentrated on
improving my feeling with the bike, and also my lap time. I managed to improve
with each run, so I was pretty happy about that. We also tested a new front tyre
with a slightly different profile than I've used before, and there was some
improvement in the front end feeling as a result. This afternoon we tried to do
some rear tyre testing, but it was difficult to get a good feel for the
different tyres, because the track lost a lot of grip as the surface temperature
went up; I just ended up sliding around everywhere. Tomorrow will be a hard day,
because I'm scheduled to do a race simulation, but it will be interesting to see
how my lap time averages out over a long run."
from Kawasaki Racing press
