Honda’s Hiroshi Aoyama and Jonathan Rea concluded their three days of testing at Phillip Island this week.
Each of them tested numerous chassis and suspension components and continued the development of Honda’s ride-by-wire throttle system that was introduced during the second half of the 2011 season.
While no lap times were released, everyone seemed happy with the results of their test. They’re taking a short break before returning to the circuit on Feb 20-21 for an official test.
Jonathan Rea: “We’ve had a good three days, completed a lot of laps and tested a whole heap of new parts. We’ve also done quite a few long runs and race simulations which, to be honest, was really good – for the simulation we did today, we even used the lights! The full race-run allows us to see exactly where we are, even though the disadvantage of testing on your own is that you’ve got no-one to measure yourself against. But the whole team is working really well and I’m really enjoying riding the bike again. Step-by-step we’re making things better and, although when you test this many parts you can end up going round in circles, I think we’ve got a bike with a good base setting to go into the 2012 season with.”
Hiroshi Aoyama: “I’ve really enjoyed the first test of the season on the new 2012 bike. I had some good feelings from the test in Qatar in December, but the feeling here at Phillip Island was quite different. We had to do a lot of work on the first two days but I learned a lot and on each day the feeling got better. We did a race simulation today and it was very interesting to experience the deterioration of the tyre. We need to make some more steps and, if we can do that, it’ll be an exciting race next month! For sure, I need to ride a lot more to try to learn the bike and the tyres because everything is still very new. I’m sure I will need a couple of races to get familiar with everything.”
Editor’s note: Video wrap-up and a picture of Rea’s latest kill below:
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