Sepang, 24 October: LCR Honda MotoGP rider Randy De Puniet rode his Honda RC212V to 8th place today in a tough and hot qualifying session at the 5.548 km Sepang circuit in readiness for the tomorrow’s 21-lap race that gets underway at 15:00 local time. The premier class qualifying session was held in typically tropical conditions with ambient temperature of 34°C (51 degrees on the asphalt) with Rossi on the top of the standing with a best lap time of 2’00.518.

After this morning’s 11th position in the free practice, De Puniet worked hard on his machinery set up to improve his pace at the Malaysian track clocking his best lap time of 2’02.098 (on lap 21 of 23). The 28-year-old made good progress on race set-up but is still missing some confidence with his braking points.

De Puniet – 8th – 2’02.098

De Puniet – 8th: “It’s been the hardest week end so far to set up the bike. After yesterday’s difficult session we worked hard to improve the machine set up and I finally lapped with a good pace in the afternoon session. In these conditions I could not qualify better than this; we still have some rear grip issues to adjust as the asphalt temperature is very high and I do not feel very comfortable with my braking points especially on turn 1, 4, 9 and the last one. However the things are going in the right direction and tomorrow’s warm up session will be helpful to fix the overall package”.