The MotoGP Sepang test showed one thing for sure about the 2011 MotoGP season; Honda's RC212V motorcycles are going to be hard to beat. The Repsol Honda team, consisting of Dani Pedrosa, Casey Stoner, and Andrea Dovizioso, were consistently at the top of the time sheets. But Jorge Lorenzo and the Factory Yamaha team are happy with the competition, saying that it will make them work harder and make less mistakes.
"It's interesting that I have to say this because we improved the bike quite a lot compared to last year. But obviously, our competitors are very strong," said Yamaha Factory Racing Team Manager Wilco Zeelenberg.
"The competition being harder is better for us. Last year Jorge won by 138 points, that is too much. 25 points or two races ahead is nice, but with 138 points it makes it easy for somebody make a lot of mistakes. I hope the competition will be very tough this year."
Lorenzo and his teammate Ben Spies had a solid testing session in Sepang, but they couldn't match the speed of the RC212Vs. The two Yamaha riders were closest to matching the speed of the Honda bikes, but were still about a second behind.
Still, the Yamaha Factory team was happy about the results.
"Jorge is the most consistent rider out there, and so far things are going well," Zeelenberg said. "We know Honda's engine configuration is completely different from ours, and we are not able to match that. But we believe that it's not always necessary since there are 18 races, and we race on very short tracks.
"We are going the right way but we need to continue working hard."
You can see a video of Zeelenberg's interview at MotoGP.com.
