Repsol Honda riders complete first day of Qatar GP with Pedrosa sixth and Marquez eleventh, as riders with more recent experience of Losail lead the way early on.
The 2014 MotoGP World Championship 2014 officially got underway with the first free practice sessions today, under the floodlights of the Losail Circuit in Qatar. It was an unusual day, in which Dani Pedrosa and Marc Márquez finished sixth and eleventh, respectively, and the riders who undertook a three-day test at the track a fortnight ago led the timesheets.
The Repsol Honda team riders completed their first laps of the Qatari track in prudent fashion, looking to adapt to the surface, the new tyres and a new bike for this season. After putting in16 laps, Pedrosa stopped the clock at 1’56.332, more than a second off the fastest time of the day (set by Aleix Espargaró). Reigning World Champion Marquez was back onboard a MotoGP bike for the first time in nearly six weeks following a leg injury, and set a best time of 1’56 seconds.682 seconds . Marquez was gradually gathering pace by the end of the day, after an extended period of inactivity.
The atypical Qatar GP schedule will continue tomorrow with two more practice sessions. The qualifying session will be held on Saturday and the race will take place on Sunday at 10pm local time.
Marc Marquez >> Audio
1:56.682, 15 laps, 81km
“I am fairly happy with how the first session went, because I haven’t been on the bike in a while. I didn’t think my foot would bother me so much -especially on the right hand corners- although at the end of the session I felt better and this gives me hope of improving tomorrow. We are going to try to follow the same working strategy as today. In terms of the times, we aren’t too far off Jorge, Valentino and Dani -and it’s normal that the riders who were here for the test a fortnight ago are fast right from the get-go”.
Dani Pedrosa >> Audio
1:56.332, 16 laps, 86 km
“We had a few problems today with grip, which is something that some of the riders who rode here at the test two weeks ago had commented about before. There isn’t much grip on the track and that means we have to try to get the most out of the bike under these circumstances. We’ll see if the track improves with a little more rubber laid down, giving us more traction. Today we just didn’t really have any, even though the track was in good condition. We still hope to improve session-by-session.”
