Yonny Hernández finds a second on day two at Sepang

The MotoGP riders were back on track today for the second day of the first preseason test at Sepang. Once again the track was open from 10am to 6pm, with the main headline being the return of double World Champion Casey Stoner, riding alongside the main championship riders for the first time since his retirement in 2012 in his capacity of Ducati test rider. It was a good day all round for the Italian factory, with Danilo Petrucci setting the fastest lap of the test so far and the likes of Barberá, Redding, Iannone and Hernández all featuring at the top end of the time sheets. As usual at this circuit the majority of the faster laps were set in the early part of the day, although Lorenzo, Crutchlow and Rossi did manage to improve their pace in the latter stages. Petrucci’s best effort of 2.00.095 improved the benchmark by six tenths from yesterday as the 1’59 mark comes into sight, with one more day of the test to come tomorrow. 
Today’s session was only seven laps old for Yonny Hernández when he clocked his fastest time of the test so far. The Colombian improved on yesterday by over a second before going on to complete 34 more laps as he continued to work on his new electronics package and tried to gain more rear grip from his Ducati. Yonny is satisfied with his work here so far and confident of making more progress tomorrow. His team-mate Eugene Laverty was forced to watch today’s action from pit wall following the crash yesterday that left him with an injured hand. The Irishman returned to hospital for further assessments today and is hoping to take some part in tomorrow’s final day on track. 
13th Yonny Hernández 2.01.644 (41 laps): “This morning we were able to immediately improve our best lap time from yesterday by more than a second on the soft tyre, but then we had a little setback. We think it was one of the lean angle sensors that wasn’t working but it meant that we couldn’t complete all the work we had planned. Anyway, the feeling continues to improve and tomorrow we will carry on working with the chassis to try and find more rear grip because we are getting some sliding on the hard rear tyre. We have improved the electronics a lot today, the bike is behaving much better than yesterday and it’s sweeter to ride. Traction control, anti-wheelie… we have taken a little step forward in all these areas that we only started working on yesterday.” 
Eugene Laverty: “We went back to the hospital today for a CT scan just to double check everything and even though it showed up some fractures we think they are from ten years ago, when I broke my hand before. So there isn’t a new fracture in there and it feels okay that’s why I want to try and ride tomorrow. There is some pain in the hand and I won't know exactly how it will be on the bike until I try it in the morning, but that is the plan at the moment.”