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Pedrosa and Marquez get things started at Catalan GP

Repsol riders Dani Pedrosa and Marc Marquez place third and sixth, respectively, after opening practice sessions at Circuit de Catalunya.

 

Friday saw a positive day of work for the Repsol Honda Team riders at the Circuit de Catalunya, where round six of the MotoGP World Championship takes place this weekend. After the two initial free practice sessions, Dani Pedrosa and Marc Marquez sit third and sixth, respectively, on the combined timesheets. The best times of the day went to Valentino Rossi and Jorge Lorenzo.

 

High temperatures which reached 28ºC -and 49ºC on track- greeted the premier class riders on their opening day at the Catalan track. Dani Pedrosa clocked the fastest time in the morning with a 1’42.044, but was unable to better that lap in an afternoon session focused on tyre choice. Repsol Honda teammate Marc Marquez made steady progress, improving his times in the afternoon and ending the session with a top time of 1’42.857 –giving him sixth place.

 

The final free practice sessions and qualifying will take place tomorrow, deciding the grid for Sunday’s race.

 

Dani Pedrosa >> Audio
FP1: 1:42.445, 18 laps, 85 km.
FP2: 1’42.557, 17 laps, 80 km.
“Above all today, we focused on testing tyres. We were able to ride some laps with the soft tyres and also the hards, in order to see which are best suited to the track. Getting the choice right is very important at this circuit, because it is always hot in the race and it is usually a key to managing this. The tyres suffer a little when we lean the bike over, but we are working on this issue. We still haven’t decided which compounds we will use, so we will see what tomorrow brings and then go from there.”

Marc Marquez >> Audio
FP1: 1:43.641, 19 laps, 90 km.
FP2: 1’42.857, 18 laps, 85 km.
“I am pretty happy with how the day went. We followed the normal Friday agenda; in the first session we were ninth, over one second from the top, then in the second session we cut the gap to half a second and finished sixth in the combined times. I am very happy with the work that we have done, but we still have things to improve and there are points on the track where I am still not comfortable. I have to improve my adaptation to the circuit and some details with the setup but the most important thing is that we have cut the gap and are working in the right direction.”

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