The first test of 2010 concluded today at around 1730h local time at the Sepang Circuit in Malaysia, where rain continued to affected proceedings. Whilst yesterday there were showers only in the morning, today the rain fell at the start and the end of the day, giving the riders a small window of dry track time in mid-afternoon.
Valentino Rossi was the fastest rider on track for the second successive day, with the next session scheduled for the 25th February, when the MotoGP field will be back in action here at Sepang.

Aspar Team rider Héctor Barberá took to the wet circuit at around 10:30am to complete eight laps of Sepang in the rain. He was later able to spend time refining the base set-up of his Ducati GP10 in the dry but unfortunately when he was feeling his most comfortable and had fitted new tyres was the moment the rain returned and hence prevented him from improving his lap time further.

However, Héctor’s times were impressive considering it was his first visit to this circuit on a MotoGP bike and he ended the session as the fastest rookie. The Spaniard is convinced that his adaptation to the team and the bike is going well and he heads home from the first test of the year in good spirits.

Héctor Barberá 2.03.032 (53 laps):
“I am really happy because even though it rained so much at the start of the day and at the end we were able to work well. I have set similar lap times to yesterday but the really pleasing thing is that we have been able to work on aspects of the set-up of my Ducati. At the end of the day the session is for testing things and that is what we have done, just trying a bunch of different configurations. It was a shame it rained again just when I had put some new slicks in and I was going to try and improve my time. Anyway, I’m happy because the team has done an excellent job and I think that the whole package – the bike and the relationship with the Ducati engineers – is coming along nicely. These two days felt short but I leave Sepang knowing that we have a lot of room for improvement and I’m excited about coming back here for the next test soon.”