Positive first Free Practice sessions for Repsol Honda Team riders at Spanish Grand Prix.
MotoGP World Championship leader Marc Marquez started strongly at the Spanish Grand Prix, the fourth round of the season. Marquez was fifth in the first session at the Circuito de Jerez on Friday, completing 20 laps; he would put in a further 18 laps in the afternoon and set a best time of 1:39.900 –taking second just 0.345s off the day’s fastest rider, Jorge Lorenzo. His Repsol Honda teammate, Dani Pedrosa, was fourth fastest in FP1 with a 1:40.823 best lap after 19 laps. He was unable to lower that marker after his 18-lap second practice -in which he placed ninth- and occupied eighth on the combined timesheet.
The start of the activity on the route of the Circuito de Jerez coincides with the launch of a new application from Box Repsol, through which followers can keep up-to-date with all the goings-on during a Grand Prix: Results from each session instantly, commentary of every lap of the MotoGP race, and the best pictures and videos of Marc Marquez and Dani Pedrosa.
Marc Marquez
“I’m happy with how this first day went overall. In the first practice session we discovered that the base setup we had in place from other circuits wasn’t working completely well for us here, but we were able to react in FP2. We’ve improved a lot, but we have to keep working because I still don’t feel entirely comfortable. The important thing is that we’re not far off Jorge [Lorenzo], who is going fastest at the moment. Valentino [Rossi] has also been very consistent, but I’m happy with how the team have been working and how they reacted to issues, so we’ll see if we can take another step forward tomorrow.”
Dani Pedrosa
“Today was similar to the situation we’ve encountered at other races this season. Unfortunately we weren’t able to make too many improvements on that as we did at Austin for the race, but of course it’s only day 1 so we’ll keep working as best we can in order to find a solution and improve our pace. At the moment we’re mainly struggling with acceleration, and these bikes are so powerful that when you lose in that area you feel it a lot. What we’ve been doing today is riding with used tyres for the entirety, and tomorrow we’ll try and take a step forward.”
