The Repsol Honda Team’s long Valencia stint, comprising a very successful final race weekend of the 2017 Championship and two productive days of testing, has finally come to an end.
Marc Márquez and Dani Pedrosa took advantage of another sunny day to continue their work in preparation for 2018. As was the case yesterday, they started on the current machine before switching over to the new one also.
Both riders carried out setup testing of the engine, chassis and electronics, and were able to accumulate useful information for the development of the bike. They also tried a rear Michelin tyre with a slightly different compound.
Márquez completed a total of 61 laps and finished up with the day’s best time at 1’30.033” with Pedrosa turning 51 laps and finishing in second place at 1’30.436”.
This was the final test of the year for the Repsol Honda Team. The next time Marc Márquez and Dani Pedrosa will be on track will be in Malaysia at the end of January.
Marc Márquez – 1st – 1:30.033
“Today we collected a lot of information, and now it will be very important to prepare well for the next time we’ll be on track, which will be the Malaysia test at the end of January. Anyway, today was a good day, very positive. We tried many things and had a good pace, so I’m happy with how it went. We had a few issues to sort out with the new bike, and of course it has some positives and negatives, but that’s completely normal for a test when you put a completely new engine and machine on the track. We also tried a lot of things on our current bike, which worked very well, and we were able to gather a lot of useful data. That said, we’ll need to try everything again at the next test. Valencia is a particular track, a small circuit, and today’s conditions were very good, so we’ll need to re-confirm everything at another circuit.”
Dani Pedrosa – 2nd – 1:30.436
“Today we started the test by checking the track with my race bike, and then we immediately moved on to the new bike to analyse the setup changes we made yesterday afternoon. We basically tested a different setup with electronics, suspension and geometry, looking to better understand how the new bike behaves. We’re not just considering performance but also trying to understand what the bike does on the tyres and on this track, and discovering what the positive and weak points are. We also tried a new swingarm and a new Michelin rear tyre that has a different compound on one side. So it was a lot of work, with many different things to understand and set up. We made a lot of progress, but of course we’re not there yet with all the settings. All in all it was a very important session, and we collected a lot of info to work.”
