Cycle News

Cycle News 2015 Issue 46 November 17

Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles

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VOL. 52 ISSUE 46 NOVEMBER 17, 2015 P51 SPAIN J orge Lorenzo and Valentino Rossi put aside their personal feud to concentrate on the job of getting the Yamaha up to standard against the Repsol Honda duo, who both topped the number one and two from 2015 on the timesheets. New MotoGP World Champion Jorge Lorenzo used the 2015 chas- sis on day one and the 2016 on day two and focused mainly on tires. At the test conclusion he was not en- tirely satisfied after his 88 laps with the performance of the front Michelin after clocking a 1:31.767 lap. "Under braking the rear is very grippy in the center of the tire but when you start leaning with the front while still braking, the front gives you more instability and you can't push so much with the brakes," said Lo- renzo. "When reaching the maximum lean with throttle the front can close suddenly if you push so much." With regards to the new ECU, the world champion wasn't initially very impressed, but after switching to the 2016 chassis for day two and focus- ing purely on the electronics, he was starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel come the test conclusion. "Yesterday (day one) neither the power nor the engine brake was giving the best performance, so they worked on that for the next morn- ing, and today I felt that it was much better and we improved quite a bit during the whole day," he said. Teammate Valentino Rossi wasn't as complimentary on the Magnetti Marelli ECU after his 114 laps, initially describing the system as "going a bit in the past," although he changed his tune a touch come the end of day two. "We worked a little bit on the elec- tronics systems for next year, which has already improved a lot compared to yesterday (day one), but we still have work to do," the nine-time world champion said. "For me we need to continue to work, because it looks like we are a bit more in trouble with the Michelin tire, especially corner entry and weight distribution. For sure, this is just the first step, but it's not so bad because we improved by a second compared to yesterday so we just have to make some more kilometers." MOVISTAR YAMAHA ////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// //////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// (Left) Lorenzo isn't happy with the front tire performance. (Below) Valentino is less happy with the performance of the control ECU.

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