De Puniet crashes

Randy de Puniet walked away uninjured after crashing Kawasaki’s new ZX-RR 800 for the first time on the second day of testing in Sepang.

The French rider crashed at turn 10 on the 13th lap of a distance run this afternoon, losing the front-end.

He was uninjured and the bike was barely damaged as he went on to complete four more laps of the long run after rescuing the in-line four-cylinder from the gravel trap.

The spill was a minor blip on another impressive display from de Puniet, who is clearly relishing in his number one status at Kawasaki. He logged a best time of 2.02.55 today to end up just 0.45s adrift of Valentino Rossi.

Today followed an impressive start to the Sepang test on Monday when he completed a 20-lap distance run, just one short of full Malaysian GP distance.

His best was an impressive 2.02.96 on his fourth lap but that was his only sub 2.03 lap in the run. He did only three low 2.04 laps though.

He said: “It was a small crash on a new setting. But we are doing so many long runs to test in race conditions to understand the bike. That is crucial for the new fuel consumption and tyre rules.”

Team-mate Olivier Jacque set a best of 2.03.76 today, 0.2s faster than he managed on the opening day.