The Repsol Honda Team riders were only able to ride on a dry track during the first Free Practice session and the final part of FP2, with Márquez 19th and Bradl 21st.
The first Free Practice session for the Austrian GP for the Repsol Honda Team riders took place in dry conditions on Friday. Working on adapting to the Red Bull Ring, Álex Márquez finished 19th, with a best time of 1:25.249, whilst teammate Stefan Bradl was 21st with a 1:25.371.
In the afternoon, rain reduced the amount of dry track time available to a matter of minutes. Márquez completed 10 laps and Bradl 4, but no rider on the MotoGP grid was able to lower their times from the morning.
Álex Márquez
“In the morning I was feeling quite good and I was able to learn the braking points and lines of the MotoGP bikes here quite quickly. But when I put in a new tyre at the end, there was a yellow flag and with the new rules you can’t improve your time. Hopefully it will be dry for FP3, because I think the position doesn’t show our true potential. I was hoping that it would either be fully wet or fully dry this afternoon, but we were left in half and half. I only did a couple of laps early to see the track, later it was drier, so I tried to push more if these are the conditions for tomorrow.”
Stefan Bradl
“The gaps are really, really close this weekend, I checked my times from FP1 and compared to last year where I had been riding the bike more, I was 0.3s faster today. So, I am happy because we’re starting in a good position and another small step can gain you a lot of positions. It’s a shame that FP2 had the strange conditions where we couldn’t do more than a few laps because we were looking to try something and the more laps I can do, the better it is for everyone. Everything feels more comfortable this weekend compared to Brno. The plan is to work on a good setting tomorrow and keep reducing the gap to the front.”
