Correos Prepago Yamaha VR46 Master Camp‘s Manuel Gonzalez and Kohta Nozane got a taste of the Sepang International Circuit‘s fast yet technical nature in both of the dry Friday practice sessions at the Grand Prix of Malaysia. Gonzalez showed early form but came short in the time attack and ended the day in 18th. Nozane made solid improvement and wrapped up the day in 27th place.
Gonzalez topped the P1 session from the get-go and kept defending the number-1 position as the times improved. He held the top spot with his 2‘07.238s set on lap 5 until the times dropped in the final stages. The Spaniard completed ten more laps but didn‘t improve and ended the morning in ninth place.
Manugasss continued his provisional-Q2 pace at the start of the afternoon session. A 2‘07.757s, set on lap 3 held him in 12th place in the first half. However, the times then started to drop. Gonzalez knew he had work to do and posted a 2‘07.163s for seventh on his eighth lap. He kept pushing but didn‘t better his time and ended P2 in 16th place and wrapped up the Friday in 18th in the combined timesheets.
Nozane made the most of the perfect riding conditions at the Sepang circuit this morning. He used the 40 minutes of track time to refamiliarize himself with the circuit. His previous YZF-R1 testing experience came to good use, but the Japanese rider did still have to adapt to the Moto2 lines. He got in 13 laps and set a best time of 2‘09.264s for 27th place.
The number-5 rider made a further step in the first half of P2. He set a 2‘08.978s on lap 6, improving by 0.286s on his morning time, but he still found himself in 29th place when the time attack started at the end of the session. Nozane took it up a notch and finished with a 2‘08.258s set on lap 14 that earned him 27th place in the P2 and the combined P1+P2 rankings.
The Correos Prepago Yamaha VR46 Master Camp teammates will be back in action from 09:25 - 09:55 GMT +8 on Saturday for P3, followed by the qualifying sessions from 13:45 - 14:25.
