After two long months in which the rules ban any testing for the World Championship bikes, Marc Márquez wore again today his overalls to start the process of adaptation to Moto2. The Repsol rider made the most of the sunny day at the Catalunya Circuit to recover the feel for his bike as he had not ridden it since last November.
The current 125cc World Champion finished today 54 laps to the Catalan track following a plan devised by his team to familiarize himself with the intermediate class. The Repsol rider took the track some minutes after noon, when the track asphalt had reached enough temperature -which arrived to 24ºC- and was able to run safely in a day not too cold -17ºC-, for the winter.
Without making many changes to his bike, Márquez focused on taking new references for the Catalan track, and to adapt himself to the demands of a bike much heavier and bigger. After too months out of the circuits, focused on doing physical work, training on bicycle and doing some motocross –to keep contact with speed-, Marc Márquez finished this first day satisfied with his performance on a track where tomorrow he will have another test session. Then the team will travel to Valencia for the next tests, scheduled for Thursday, Friday and Saturday of this week.
Marc Márquez >> Audio
“The first day it always takes a bit to set a good pace again after so long and you don’t feel completely comfortable, but thanks to the team’s help we were able to improve step by step. When I began to lap a bit faster we also started to make some small adjustments to the bike’s set-up, but they are still not very significant. Now we have to take things calmly; we will have time to try and set good registers. This first test was for me to recover the confidence on the bike, run the first kilometres of the year and get the first feelings from the bike. As I increased the pace, we found some set-up problems that we have been solving, but we still have a good margin to improve”.
