Karel Abraham, who completed only 3 laps during the first day of the second official MotoGP test at Sepang in Malaysia, withdrew from the test after back injuries from a crash at Jerez in Spain last week didn’t allowed him to continue. Abraham’s bike was used by Ducati test rider Franco Battaini, who finished in thirteenth position, 3,802s behind the fastest rider Casey Stoner.
Karel Abraham:
„It’s a shame because we lost a lot of time that we could spend by working on the bike. But it doesn’t make any sense to continue with such a pain and the chance that the injury would heal during the next two days is quite small. Now I’m heading back to the Czech Republic. The crash at Jerez was unlucky. There was an oil spill on the track and the bike slipped on it. The crash was very hard, the bike even caught fire. Most of the problems causes me the scapula. I have undervent some tests in a hospital in Brno after I returned from Jerez and there is a possibility that it’s fractured. There are three weeks before the final pre-season test and I know that I have to be fit as soon as possible and continue in the training. We lost a lot of time and now we have only a few days before the first race in Qatar to minimize the gap between us and the other riders.“
Martin Havlíček:
„It’s a big shame for us, but we are staying at Sepang and we will try to get as much data as possible. Thanks to the cooperation with Ducati Team, we could use the experiences of Franco Battaini, who spent the morning on Karel’s bike and then switched to Nicky Hayden’s bike while Nicky decided to skip the afternoon practice due to his injuries. Tomorrow we would like to continue in the same mode, but it depends on Nicky. But Franco, who uses the same set-up of the bike as Karel, is very experienced and has very good feeling for the bike. Gathered data and informations from him are very usefull. Now we are not focusing on the lap times, our goal is to get as much data as possible.“
source: Cardion Ducati AB Press Release
