FIRST DAY OF TESTING FOR MARCO AND TONI AT SEPANG The 2006 championship started today for Honda, Yamaha, Kawasaki and Suzuki. The teams of the four Japanese manufactures came back to action at Sepang, Malesia for the last test of the year, three days before the winter break, providing one last opportunity for the riders to continue preparations for next season before the end of 2005. It will be the final chance until next year as teams are not permitted to test between the 1st of December until the 20th of January. The first day of testing was very hot and humid (30 degrees the air temperature and over 70% of humidity). Because of the overnight rain, the track was wet in the morning and the Fortuna Honda riders could start testing only from 12.00. Both Marco Melandri and Toni Elias worked hard out there and were very positive. Marco worked mainly on set up and tyre testing while Toni, at his second debut on the RC211V after the test in Valencia, lapped in order to gain confidence with the bike. MARCO MELANDRI (61 laps, 2’02″96): “It’s only three weeks since I raced the bike I felt good and did a lot of laps. The track today was not in very good condition but I could find a decent rhythm. We spent the day working on the general bike settings for the bike before we started testing tyres for Michelin. I was injured when the race was held here so we needed to fix the best setting before testing several front and rear tyres. Unfortunately I had to stop my test one hour early. I’m not 100% well, I was quite sick while I was in Japan last week so I didn’t want to get too tired because we have two more days testing.” TONI ELIAS (49 laps, 2’04″059): “I like the bike and I’m very happy of today’s test session. The conditions were not ideal today because the track was quite wet in the morning but we got in a lot of laps. I made a lot of kilometres today and found a good riding position. I didn’t get crazy with the set up by trying to many things, just little adjustments. I felt more comfortable on the bike today than I did at the first test in Valencia. I was very calm and comfortable and lapped without forcing. I am very happy with this team and my chief mechanic, Antonio Jiminez. Everybody has been very helpful and it has given me a lot of confidence for this test and the future. “