With weather conditions improving, until rain arrived at 17h20, the Repsol Honda Team were finally able to go out on track today and begin their testing programme.
Marc Marquez, in his first time at Aragon on the MotoGP machine, completed 71 laps only aboard his 2013 machine and recorded a quicker time than the pole record set by Casey Stoner in 2011 (1’48.451) with a lap of 1’48.434. He and his team will stay for an extra day tomorrow to test some more items on his current bike and also the 2014 prototype.
His teammate Dani Pedrosa completed his testing programme on the 2013 bike and also tested the 2014 prototype to give his first feedback to the HRC technicians. He did a total of 62 laps with a best time of 1’48.928 set on his current bike, and will not stay to test tomorrow.
Dani Pedrosa
1:48.928, 62 laps, 315 km.
“It’s been a positive day of testing. We focused more on the actual bike doing several tests with different rear shocks to find more grip especially in the exit of the corners. I am quite happy as we found something good. We also did a kind of “shake down” of the 2014 prototype. I did just two exits and a total of nine laps, basically to get the first impression and give to the engineers some feedback. The bike is ok, but at the moment we need more time to understand it, so in the short term I will not use it.”
Marc Marquez
1:48.434, 71 laps, 361 km.
“I am happy with today’s test. Aragon is one of my preferred circuits and on a MotoGP bike it is a lot of fun! At the beginning it was difficult, as many of the braking points are blind, but in the end I felt comfortable. We did a good test trying to solve a problem we had in the last couple of races. We did some change in the geometry and we found a good base set up that I believe will be useful also in the coming circuits and not only here. Tomorrow I will do some more tests on the actual bike and then I will try the 2014 prototype. It will be an busy day!”
