Repsol Honda Team riders finish first day of practice for British Grand Prix in fifth and ninth, respectively.
MotoGP action returned this Friday at Silverstone for the twelfth round of the season, with the first day of practice seeing Marc Marquez and Dani Pedrosa finish fifth and ninth, respectively. In the first session, despite a small crash, Marquez was quickly competitive, finishing third on the timesheets. In the second session, the World Championship leader lowered his lap times early, closing the day with a time of 2:02.240. His best time was just 8 tenths off Andrea Iannone, the fastest rider of the day.
On the other side of the box, Pedrosa placed eighth in the first free practice session, then managed to lower his morning times at the start of FP2 –working his way up to be among the fastest in the session until the final minutes. When the field decided to run softer tyre compounds, the Repsol Honda team rider set a 2:02.372 lap which earned him ninth place overall.
Marc Marquez, 5th 2:02.240 >> Audio
“This first day went well, especially in the afternoon. In the morning we went out with the medium front compound and quickly saw that it wasn’t the best choice in that moment, because with the track still being very cold, I crashed when riding very slowly. However, in the second session I gained confidence again, and that allowed us to work very well with the harder rear tyre, which works quite well and seems to be the one we’ll go with for the race, as long as it’s dry. We still need to continue working on the setup and understand the soft rear tyre a little better. The important thing is that I’m feeling good and I have a good pace; I’m happy with how everything went”.
Dani Pedrosa, 9th 2:02.375 >> Audio
“Today we’ve been quite lucky with the weather as we had two full dry sessions before the rain started. It was exactly what I needed: doing as many laps as possible on this demanding track. We were able to try both the medium and soft rear tyres and that was also good. I think it’s positive to already have this feeling in the dry and we’ll see what weather we get tomorrow and what track conditions we’ll find. In any case, we’ll keep working to further improve our feeling”.
