Pol Espargaró finishes in the Top 10 on Friday at the Italian Grand Prix, with Marc Márquez twelfth
The first two Free Practices for the Italian Grand Prix took place under clear skies on Friday.
Pol Espargaró finished the first session of the day as the eighth fastest rider. In the afternoon, on his fifteenth lap, the Repsol Honda Team rider lowered his best time to a 1:46.618, putting him tenth overall.
Espargaró holds a provisional spot in Q2.
Marc Márquez made steady improvement at the Autodromo Internazionale del Mugello. The Repsol Honda Team rider concluded FP1 nineteenth, without using new tyres in the session and taking the opportunity to assess his feeling. In the second session of the day, Márquez improved his time to 1:46.658, placing him twelfth.
Although only 40 thousandths behind his team-mate, he will need a faster time in FP3 in order to make the cut for Q2.
MARC MÁRQUEZ – 12th 1’46.658
“In Free Practice 1 I went out and I could see I was struggling a lot, so I focused more on finding the correct line and understanding our limits. Then in the afternoon, during FP2, we were able to make a step and push harder. Let’s see what happens tomorrow, we need to make another step but at the moment we are quite far from the top. We are struggling with turning and also riding here, but let’s see. The conditions can change and a lot can still happen. We need to understand the bike balance for tomorrow and try working on a few more different things.”
POL ESPARGARÓ – 10th 1’46.618
“It was not a great day, we are the fastest Honda but we are quite far from thee top and need to find something more. In the afternoon we worked hard to go quicker even if the conditions made it quite difficult and we made some progress. Everyone in the team is working very hard to fix the problems and tomorrow’s conditions could change the situation a lot. At the moment we are in between the medium and the hard, each presents a different strength and we need to understand what is best.”
