It was a good debut on the Suzuki GSV-R for Álvaro Bautista at the Ricardo Tormo Circuit, as he made his first strides in MotoGP at the traditional Valencia test.

Wednesday saw the Spaniard set his best lap on the third and final day with a 1.34.163, and Bautista will now travel to Estoril in Portugal with Rizla Suzuki team test rider Nobuatsu Aoki, as he continues his education on the machine.

“I’ve enjoyed it so much, the people here are very professional and I feel so good working with them,” said Bautista. “I’ve taken it step by step and have improved; each time I went out on the bike I felt better. Each day we went faster, and I’m happy with the three days.”

Suzuki team manager Paul Denning said of Bautista’s performance, “Álvaro’s transition to the four-stroke and to the team has been seamless; he looks very comfortable on the bike and appears to have ridden within his own abilities in this first test on the GSV-R. He has treated the three days not so much as a test, but as an extended track-day. He has certainly had some fun as well as beginning to understand the characteristics of the bike.”

Denning added, “He didn’t run any of the updated parts, so to make consistent low 1’34s is a very positive start. He’s very focused and is an enthusiastic character to have in the pit and we are looking forward to having an enjoyable and hard-charging atmosphere with Loris (Capirossi) and Álvaro for 2010.”

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That a sixth place result in the penultimate race of the season matches Chris Vermeulen’s second best result of 2009 so far speaks for itself in terms of the difficult time he has had this year, but the departing Rizla Suzuki man was pleased to have produced a competitive display in Malaysia on Sunday.

Although the likeable Australian is departing from MotoGP to pastures new at the end of the current campaign he wants to return to the World Championship in the future, and the 10 valuable points he gained at round 16 mean he has every chance of a good final standings result after Valencia in two weeks time.

Vermeulen is involved in a close five-rider fight with Marco Melandri, Loris Capirossi, Alex de Angelis and Toni Elías for seventh place overall, and he outperformed all of them at Sepang on Sunday to give himself a confidence boosting result.

“I got a good start, but in turn one there was a lot going on and I got pushed around a little bit, but I came out of it ok and was able to get my head down straight away,” Vermeulen commented as he reviewed the wet race at Sepang. “For the first four or five laps I really struggled to get a feeling in the tyres, especially on the left-hand-side, but once I got that working and into a rhythm I felt quite good. The bike worked well up until the last few laps – when the track started to dry out – and then it was very difficult through the corners, but I’m sure it wasn’t easy for anyone out there.”

Noting the hard graft put in by his mechanics at round 16, he added, “I think we had the speed for a top five today and my guys did a great job with the motorbike to be able to give me something competitive today when we hadn’t done any wet testing here at all.”

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Rizla Suzuki’s Loris Capirossi got the weekend of the Shell Advance Malaysian Motorcycle Grand Prix off to an encouraging start as he recorded the sixth fastest time around the 5.548km Sepang International Circuit in practice on Friday.

The experienced Italian laid down a best effort of 2’03.253, leaving him a second adrift of pace-man Jorge Lorenzo, but confident of improving as the weekend goes on.

Loris Capirossi – 6th

“We did struggle a bit at the beginning as we tried to modify the bike, but the times were still quite good so we knew we were going in the right direction. Towards the end of the session the bike became a bit better, but it is still not perfect so we have a bit of work to do. We used two completely different traction controls, we didn’t quite get the best feeling from either of them but we certainly have a direction to follow tomorrow with the data we have got from them. Overall it has not been too bad today and we know we can improve quite a bit tomorrow, we have a good plan and if it all goes well we should have a really good weekend.”

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