The low temperatures and rain spoilt the first test day at the Circuit de Catalunya. The 125cc and new Moto2 riders were only able to complete a few laps on the cold asphalt of the Catalan track. Tomorrow’s weather forecast is more optimistic; it is expected to be sunny and more stable.
Marc Márquez had a very special day today at the Catalan circuit. The young Repsol rider used his new machine -Derbi RSA 125- and design for the first time on a very special day, on which he also celebrated his seventeenth birthday. During the morning photo call and in front of all the media gathered in the pit lane at the circuit, young Marc’s father – Julià Márquez- gave his son a birthday cake.
Focused on the little work of the day -the cold and wet track were not very favourable to going out- Marc Márquez went out on the track after 3.00 pm to then return to the garage after completing just 10 laps, enough time to run in the new machine. Just before 4.00 pm, it started raining again at the circuit, bringing an end to this short day. After checking the track conditions and that the machine worked correctly, Márquez went back to the garage, wrapping up the today’s short day of testing.
Tomorrow, testing will continue and on Friday the scheduled three day test will end. Then, the teams in the lower categories of the World Championship will head for Valencia, where in a week and a half’s time, 2010 pre-season testing will resume.
Marc Márquez, 2’05.1 sec. 10 laps >> Audio
“I was looking forward to getting on the bike and getting back into the rhythm, but I’ll have to wait because the track conditions were not the best today. The day was spent more on taking photos and presenting the bike to journalists than testing. The asphalt wasn’t dry, nor wet enough to ride with the wet set-up. We waited until the afternoon, but it still hadn’t dried out, so we took advantage to run in the bike, which is completely new, and spent a second stint checking that everything was OK and getting it ready for tomorrow. We hope that the weather conditions are good”.
Track conditions
Weather: Cloudy with sunny spells
Temperature: 12.7ºC
Humidity level: 75%
Asphalt conditions: Wet
Track temperature: 13ºC
Wind speed: 6 km/h.
