Bridgestone slick compounds available: Front: Soft & Hard. Rear: Soft(Symmetric), Medium (Asymmetric) and Hard (Symmetric)

Bridgestone wet tyre compounds available: Hard

Weather: Dry. Ambient 29-32°C; Track 34-53°C (Bridgestone measurement)

Sepang, 6 Feb 2015: Current World Champion Marc Marquez emphatically underlined his title credentials for the upcoming season by setting a scorching time of 1'58.867 at the first MotoGP™ group test of 2015 at Malaysia’s Sepang International Circuit.

According to a Bridgestone Press Release here on Friday, in cool conditions on the morning of the final day, Repsol Honda’s Marquez was the first ever rider to lap the Sepang circuit in the 1’58 bracket to ultimately set a time 0.139 seconds quicker than his teammate Dani Pedrosa, who was second quickest in Malaysia. Third quickest overall was Ducati Team’s Andrea Iannone, with the Italian rider relishing his graduation to the factory Ducati team with lap time of 1’59.388, over 1.3 seconds quicker than his best time in last year’s opening group test.

Thirty riders – including a total of five test riders from Aprilia, Honda, Suzuki and Yamaha – took part in the first group test of 2015, completing a total of 4429 laps (24,550 kilometres) on Bridgestone tyres. The gap in lap time from the quickest to slowest rider at the first Sepang test was 7.323 seconds.

Fine and dry conditions presented themselves during the three days of the test, with a peak track temperature of 53°C recorded on the afternoon of the second day. Track conditions were usual for Sepang, with only moderate grip levels and certain sections of the circuit being quite bumpy, but the combination of fine weather, the latest MotoGP machinery and Bridgestone’s 2015 specification tyres resulted in the test being run at record pace. The slightly cooler conditions on the morning of the final day allowed the riders to extract maximum performance from their tyres, with the top seven riders on the timesheets able to set times in the 1’59 bracket.

All front and rear slick compound choices were utilised by riders over the three days and Bridgestone will now analyse the data acquired to incorporate into their tyre development programme for the 2015 season. Bridgestone will be back in Sepang for the second MotoGP™ official test which will take place from February 23-25.

Shinji Aoki - Manager, Bridgestone Motorsport Tyre Development Department

“This was a successful first group test and I am happy with the feedback we received from the riders on our 2015 specification tyres. Our technical objectives for this test were to give the riders some newly developed tyres based on our learnings from last year, while also ensuring that we provided a softer rear tyre allocation to cope with the increased performance of the current Open-class machines. I am happy to say that we achieved all our objectives, and despite track conditions not being ideal, the pace set over the three days was very impressive. We now look forward to continuing our good work at Sepang in a few weeks’ time.”

Sepang I MotoGP™ Group Test – combined lap times

Pos

Rider

Team

Fastest lap

Gap

Total laps

1

Marc MARQUEZ

Repsol Honda Team

1'58.867

181

2

Dani PEDROSA

Repsol Honda Team

1'59.006

0.139

138

3

Andrea IANNONE

Ducati Team

1'59.388

0.521

160

4

Valentino ROSSI

Movistar Yamaha MotoGP

1'59.401

0.534

169

5

Jorge LORENZO

Movistar Yamaha MotoGP

1'59.624

0.757

166

6

Pol ESPARGARO

Monster Yamaha Tech 3

1'59.851

0.984

162

7

Andrea DOVIZIOSO

Ducati Team

1'59.874

1.007

128

8

Stefan BRADL

Forward Racing Team

2'00.294

1.427

156

9

Bradley SMITH

Monster Yamaha Tech 3

2'00.384

1.517

153

10

Aleix ESPARGARO

Team Suzuki MotoGP

2'00.486

1.619

137

11

Cal CRUTCHLOW

CWM LCR Honda

2'00.536

1.669

190

12

Maverick VIÑALES

Team Suzuki MotoGP

2'00.964

2.097

176

13

Danilo PETRUCCI

Pramac Racing

2'00.970

2.103

153

14

Hiroshi AOYAMA

HRC

2'01.029

2.162

176

15

Hector BARBERA

Avintia Racing

2'01.183

2.316

154

16

Michele PIRRO

Pramac Racing

2'01.232

2.365

150

17

Scott REDDING

Estrella Galicia 0,0 Marc VDS

2'01.263

2.396

182

18

Nicky HAYDEN

Drive M7 Aspar

2'01.508

2.641

144

19

Loris BAZ

Forward Racing Team

2'01.624

2.757

156

20

Jack MILLER

CWM LCR Honda

2'01.895

3.028

166

21

Alvaro  BAUTISTA

Aprilia Racing Team Gresini

2'01.924

3.057

157

22

Mike DI MEGLIO

Avintia Racing

2'02.128

3.261

149

23

Karel  ABRAHAM

AB Motoracing

2'02.297

3.43

140

24

Eugene  LAVERTY

Drive M7 Aspar

2'02.334

3.467

149

25

Katsuyuki NAKASUGA

Yamaha Factory Test Team

2'02.363

3.496

109

26

Takumi  TAKAHASHI

HRC

2'03.113

4.246

201

27

Alex DE ANGELIS

Octo Ioda Racing Team

2'03.399

4.532

125

28

Marco MELANDRI

Aprilia Racing Team Gresini

2'03.641

4.774

156

29

Takuya TSUDA

Team Suzuki MotoGP

2'05.478

6.611

18

30

Michael LAVERTY

Aprilia Test Team

2'06.190

7.323

28

eom/david/Bridgestone release