Reigning MotoGP World Champion places just 3 tenths off the day’s fastest time. Dani Pedrosa is 8 tenths off, in thirteenth
· Marc Márquez stopped the clock in FP2 at 1:39.778, over a second quicker than in FP1 and almost 2 seconds faster than in 2016.
· Dani Pedrosa, who placed nineteenth in the first practice session, improved by almost 1.5 seconds in the afternoon run.
· Márquez crashed at the start of FP1 at Turn 2, whilst Pedrosa fell at the penultimate corner 15 minutes from the end of FP2.
· For safety reasons, the riders are obliged to put in a minimum of 5 consecutive laps with the hardest rear tyre brought by Michelin, in either FP1 or FP2.
Marc Márquez
2nd, + 0.301 sec.
“I’m quite happy with today because although we still have some issues to sort out, we’re not far from the top. As always happens here in Argentina, today the track was quite slippery in the beginning, and I crashed this morning because I was pushing a little too hard and went a bit off line. Anyway, after that we worked really hard and found a promising setup. We’re still missing something, and tomorrow we’ll try to improve in the second sector, especially the acceleration at turns 3 and 4.”
Dani Pedrosa
13th, + 0.868 sec.
“Today wasn’t the best day for us because we suffered a rear-tyre puncture in FP1 and couldn’t fully exploit the session until the end. In FP2 we started well, testing some tyres when the track conditions were good enough like we had planned, but unfortunately, when I was improving during my second exit, I lost the front and had a small crash. I was trying the hard front for the first time, it was only my second lap of that run, and I may have pushed too hard. That wasn’t ideal for the time attack at the end of the session, because the feeling was different after the crash. Well, sometimes you have days like this, and hopefully the weather will stay good tomorrow and we’ll be able to improve.”
