Repsol Honda Team riders finish fifth –Marc Marquez– and eleventh –Dani Pedrosa– on first day of Italian GP, after a first session in the morning affected by rainfall and a second on dry asphalt.
The Repsol Honda team riders began the Italian Grand Prix weekend on Friday, albeit with difficult track conditions hampering their efforts. With the asphalt still wet due to rainfall overnight and in the early morning, Marc Marquez and Dani Pedrosa put in minimum laps in the first practice session. In the afternoon, Marquez completed 19 laps –the best of which was a 1:48.270, almost six tenths off Friday pacesetter Andrea Iannone and just 1.5 tenths off the rider in second place. Teammate Pedrosa rode the same number of laps and stopped the clock at 1:48.713, just over 1 second off the fastest time. The pair claimed fifth and eleventh place, respectively, on the combined timesheet for Friday.
Marc Marquez >> Audio
5th, 1:48.290 sec, 19 laps, 100 km.
“I’m happy with how practice went today overall, despite having finished fifth because my feeling was pretty good. I think there is room for improvement, but I guess that’s the same for all the riders, because I expected to be a little further off and the difference turned out not to have been much. We will continue with the same dynamic, because we know that this is a difficult track and that the conditions will improve. We’ll see how it goes tomorrow, as today was a special day because of the wet track in FP1. However, the times in the second session were good. Let’s see if we can gradually become more consistent, because the feeling at the moment is pretty good.”
Dani Pedrosa >> Audio
11th, 1:48.713 sec, 21 laps, 110 km.
“We have not started too badly here at Mugello but honestly nothing special. The behaviour of the bike is more or less the same as at other circuits. The tyres have not worked badly at all, the grip was good enough and we have set decent times but we are still suffering on the corners and on the straights. At the moment our strength here is on corner entry while we’re still not quick enough in the middle and on corner exit. We cannot keep the best line so we will have to try and work to improve in that area. We have to find a good compromise for this beautiful and very physically and demanding circuit.”
