Alex Rins places third in combined first night standings, with Alex Marquez fourth.
Both Alex Rins and Alex Marquez started strongly on the opening night of practice of the 2013 World Championship. After the long winter of waiting, the Repsol riders finally returned to GP action to kick off the Grand Prix of Qatar.
The Moto3 riders had two practice sessions, lasting 40 minutes each. In the first Moto3 session under the floodlights in Losail –the only night event of the year-, Rins clocked the second best time and Marquez was fourteenth. In the second free practice session, with the track cleaner already, Rins placed third with a best time of 2.07.968. He did that on lap 7 of his 14. Marquez was in tenth throughout the session, before making a breakthrough on his 14th lap of 16 to set a 2.08.351 time which moved him up to fourth.
Alex Rins >> Audio
FP1: 2:09.346, 15 laps, 81 km.
FP2: 2:07.968, 14 laps, 75 km.
“We are very happy with today’s results, as I lowered my time from last year by a considerable margin. We improved with every lap, but also had some setbacks; some were easy to resolve, but the rest will need work tomorrow. Today we tried a different tyre, which is what began the problems, but tomorrow we will have time to finish working on the setup. The KTM is a good bike that lets me corner well, and gives good top speed on the straights.”
Alex Marquez >> Audio
FP1: 2:10.618, 16 laps, 86 km.
FP2: 2:08.351, 16 laps, 86 km.
“Qatar is a new track for me and is rather difficult, so it is tough to ride by myself. In the first session the track was fairly dirty, but in the end we had a decent amount of grip and were able to improve enough to take 14th. I knew that in the second session I could do better, and that was the case. In that session we made some changes to the bike that helped me improve, lap after lap. Tomorrow we will try to solve some issues in order to be ready for qualifying.”
