Four teams and seven riders took to the track today (Monday 5th February) in Malaysia, for MotoGP’s second visit to Sepang of 2007.

The teams testing in Sepang were absent from last week’s Australian excursion continued their 800cc development in the humid Malaysian conditions, in the first of three testing days.

Yamaha factory riders, Colin Edwards and Valentino Rossi took the early initiative in Asia, by topping the timesheets. Edwards put in a lap of 2mins 02.175sec on the latest version of the M1, edging out team-mate and five-time MotoGP World Champion Rossi by under 5 hundredths of a second. The Italian, who committed his future to the factory for the next two seasons last week, rode the fewest laps of any rider on day one, completing just 40 circuits.

Randy de Puniet aboard his Kawasaki was the only other rider to break the 2mins 03secs barrier, albeit over half a second slower than the two official Yamaha representatives. The Frenchman grafted hard on the opening day, and put in over twice as many laps as Rossi on the Ninja ZX-RR800. [source: crash.net]