Repsol riders second and fifth, respectively, in practice for Spanish Grand Prix.
After visits far afield to Qatar and the USA, MotoGP is back in Europe. The Spanish Grand Prix kicked off today at the Circuito de Jerez, where Dani Pedrosa and Marc Marquez rode to second and fifth, respectively, on the combined timesheets.
The opening Free Practice session saw a tight duel between Jorge Lorenzo and Dani Pedrosa, who dominated the standings and were separable by a mere 3 thousandths of a second. In his second ride at Jerez with a MotoGP bike, Marquez placed fifth, 0.784 behind the reigning World Champion. In the second session, Pedrosa was unable to lower his times and was third quickest, behind Lorenzo and Cal Crutchlow and 52 thousandths of a second off his morning lap. His best time of the day was 1’39.704. Marquez took more than half a second off his best lap, stopping the clock at 1’39.889 to again take fifth.
Tomorrow sees the final practice sessions and then qualifying at 2pm local time.
Dani Pedrosa >> Audio
FP1: 1:39.704, 19 laps, 84 km.
FP2: 1:39.757, 21 laps, 93 km.
“Today we were able to get some good laps in at this circuit. We tried the soft and the hard tyre, and also some things with the suspension settings. It wasn’t bad, generally, although we need to keep working on this in order to get the bike more stable –both on the entrance and exit of the corners. That would allow us to ride at a faster pace. We will also need to prepare well for qualifying, which could be very tight.”
Marc Márquez >> Audio
FP1: 1:40.485, 18 laps, 80 km.
FP2: 1:39.889, 20 laps, 88 km.
“Today was the first day of practice here in Jerez and everything went pretty well. Yesterday I said in the press conference that it would be a little difficult at this track but, to tell the truth, things went better for me here than I was expecting. We have grown stronger with every lap and I think that the key is to keep calm. In the morning it was a little difficult to control my nerves, but later I tried to calm down and follow our normal strategy. Tomorrow we will have to focus in order to improve, as the rest of the riders will be going all-out.”
