Kawasaki’s Shinya Nakano blitzed his way to the top of the timesheet at Jerez today, in front of Spanish race fans who’d turned out in their thousands to get a sneak preview of the MotoGP riders ahead of the opening race of the season at Jerez in three weeks time.

With race conditions likely to be similar to those of today, Nakano started his test programme working with Bridgestone to identify potential race tyres, before running a race distance simulation to confirm their initial selection early in the afternoon.

The 28-year-old Kawasaki rider also used the 27-lap endurance run to evaluate the latest revisions to the fuel injection system on his Ninja ZX-RR engine, designed to improve driveability around the technically demanding Jerez circuit.

Late in the afternoon session Nakano returned to the track with a qualifying tyre fitted to his Ninja ZX-RR, lapping the 4.432 km Jerez circuit more than half-a-second faster than his fifth place qualifying time from the race here last year, and almost the same distance ahead of his nearest rival today, Loris Capirossi.

Nakano declared himself happy with today’s performance, but still keen to see further improvements during tomorrow’s final day of testing.

Hot on Nakano’s heels was his Kawasaki teammate, Randy de Puniet, who set the fourth fastest time today, despite still suffering with the toothache that caused him so many problems during the opening day at Jerez yesterday.

De Puniet, who was running today on a slightly older specification engine than Nakano, started with tyre testing for Bridgestone, working his way through a number of different compounds and profiles on the rear of his Ninja ZX-RR.

The 25-year-old Frenchman also evaluated different fuel injection and engine management settings, in a bid to better control the bike when hard on the throttle out of the turns.

De Puniet will run a race simulation tomorrow afternoon, after his endurance run today was cut short after just 24 laps due to problems with rear traction on his Ninja ZX-RR.

source:www.speedtv.com

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