From a press release issued by Ducati Corse:

DUCATI MARLBORO TEAM – PRESS INFORMATION
SEPANG (Malaysia)
21 January 2003

BOTH CAPIROSSI AND BAYLISS IMPROVE ON SECOND DAY OF DUCATI DESMOSEDICI TESTING AT SEPANG

The second day of testing for the Ducati Marlboro Team at the Sepang circuit in Malaysia mainly revolved around set-up work on the Ducati Desmosedici. Both Capirossi and Bayliss completed a similar number of laps, 56 for Loris and 57 for Troy.

The high temperatures (air 33° C / 51° C track) enabled the team to verify the performance of the bike in difficult conditions, and confirmed the validity of the technical solutions applied so far by Ducati Corse engineers.

Both riders slightly improved their times today. Capirossi, who felt more at home on the Malaysian track, got down to a time of 2:04.4, while Bayliss continued his learning curve, but improved on yesterday’s performance to end the day with a time of 2:06.1.

“I’m pleased with the way testing went today” commented Troy at the end of the session. “My aim is above all to learn the track and establish the right feeling with the bike and the results so far show that we are on the right track. Today we concentrated on finding the best set-up for these temperatures and this type of track surface. I feel that we’ve still got a lot of room for improvement, but at the moment I prefer to concentrate on testing and set-up. As well as the Michelin tyres, today I also tried a number of different fairings, due to the high temperatures, and new gear ratios. We have to take advantage of every lap of the track to understand the bike and we’ll be doing the same sort of work tomorrow.”

“Today we did a really good job” declared Loris. “We managed to resolve many of the doubts that we had yesterday, in particular regarding grip. We tested lots of front and rear tyres and by the end of the day we had sorted out the problems of traction and spinning at the rear. This enabled me to improve on yesterday’s time and I finished with 2:04.4. We mustn’t forget however that we are only here to do testing and tomorrow will also be dedicated to the tyres and accumulating as much experience as possible because inexperience will be our worst enemy. The results that we are obtaining day after day are most satisfying and give us cause for hope. In addition these four-stroke bikes are really enjoyable to ride, the Desmosedici slides around easily, it’s great fun!”