The initial two day testing at Sepang was a tough ride for the San Carlo Honda Gresini pair of Marco Melandri and Marco Simoncelli, who were forced to work hard on the setting up of their Honda RC212V bikes.

Wet weather conditions halted both racers from testing in the morning of the second day, further complications occurred when Simoncelli crashed in the afternoon, scraping his elbow, left thigh and bruising the little finger of his left hand.

Despite the agony and being aware of the minimal testing time left prior to the beginning of the World Championship, Simoncelli courageously raced back onto the circuit to continue the work with the MotoGP Honda. He added pace once again and collected vital information for future tests.

Melandri finished the day well, leaving Sepang confident of extra improvement following the next test on February 25-26.

Marco Melandri – 2’02.810 lap time

“It's been a very difficult day, continuing our work on the geometry of the bike and trying hard to find the right balance, the feeling in the front end and on corner entry. We found both positive and negative solutions before discovering a setting later on which could serve as a base geometry from which to work in the future. Then we also worked on the suspension, finding considerable improvements, however we know there is still lots to do. With everything we've found we will be able to prepare a good working plan for the next test, it was just a shame about the rain here which cut the test an hour short and stopped us from testing with new tyres. The important thing however was to find the right direction and I think that in the end we've managed that so we now leave Sepang extremely confident.”

Marco Simoncelli – 2’03.245 lap time

“The first half of the day was relatively difficult because we couldn't get the bike to work properly and lost lots of time, then to top it off I had a crash. I had gone out with new tyres and after half a lap I came back in because of the same problems. I did a technical check and I went out once more. In the first left-hander although I was really paying attention – maybe not enough – the bike catapulted me off. I hit the asphalt hard and thinking about it now I was lucky just to get a few grazes, it could have been a lot worse. Later we went back to work in the afternoon and things were much more positive as the bike felt much improved and I was able to ride it better than yesterday, the feeling was better and the time I did wasn't by chance. Now we need to organise our ideas and think about a plan of attack for the next tests so I'm going home with high morale.”