Repsol Honda riders improve their times steadily in first two Free Practice sessions at the Dutch TT.
Marc Márquez improved his times by 1.5 seconds from the first and second session, and moved up from thirteenth to third position on the combined timesheets.
Dani Pedrosa was seventh in FP1, just 0.256s off the fastest time. He lowered his best time by almost eight tenths to close the day in tenth.
Light rain fell at some points during the day. It is also forecast for tomorrow, and thus many riders looked for a fast time to ensure a direct path into Q2.
Marc Márquez, 3rd – 1:33.782 sec,
“With the wind, conditions were quite tricky today, but ultimately I’m happy enough with how it went. This morning we worked a bit more for the race pace, while in the afternoon, when a few drops started to fall, we almost immediately went for a time attack. In the end we did quite a good session, but our rivals are still a bit ahead of us. Anyway, I think we’re working in the right direction with the bike setup, and we just have to continue in this way, looking to improve the bike stability and rear grip above all. We have some margin and we’ll do our best to be faster.”
Dani Pedrosa, 10th – 1:34.148 sec,
“Today we tried different tyres and not much else. We actually had a setup for this track that we planned to test, but with the weather so changeable and the forecast not good for tomorrow, the main goal became to try and be fast and secure a placing in the top 10. We were able to achieve that, improving a bit lap by lap, though not as much as we would have liked. Anyway, if it actually does rain tomorrow, we just have to focus on getting a good feeling in the wet and get ready for qualifying, no matter what conditions we’ll have in the afternoon.”
