Repsol Honda riders among the fastest on first day of practice at the fastest track on the calendar.
Dani Pedrosa occupied third place on the timesheets in the two sessions held today: 1 tenth off the fastest time in FP1 and 4 tenths in FP2.
Current World Champion Márquez finished fifth in FP1, 0.250s off the top, and sixth in FP2 – seventh overall and 6 tenths off the best lap.
Márquez led each of today’s sessions for around 20 minutes.
Marc Márquez, 7th | 1:24.649 sec.
“We’re satisfied with how it went today. We started the weekend with a completely different setup from last year and it worked quite well. We’ve definitely made a step forward with the acceleration and with the general settings of the bike. Of course we must wait and see how it goes tomorrow, as we have a few details we still need to work on. The others also will improve, but so far we’re happy with what we’ve done and with our race pace. At the end of FP2 I decided to continue with a used medium rear tyre in order to focus on preparing well for Sunday. The weather forecast shows possible rain conditions for tomorrow morning, but I decided to take that gamble because I wanted to prepare well for the Sunday race.”
Dani Pedrosa, 3rd | 1:24.474 sec.
“Today we worked well. We thought we would have to deal with rainy conditions but luckily we were able to start in the dry, and overall we had more dry track time available than expected. We’re happy because the first feeling was good and generally we felt better than the last year. We still have work to do on the bike’s setup and on the mapping. We must improve our race pace and make a good tyre choice for Sunday, but so far we’re happy with how we started the weekend.”
