Repsol Honda Team riders complete positive second day in Barcelona. Marc Marquez sets fourth fastest time and Dani Pedrosa places sixth.
The second day of the Catalan Grand Prix in Barcelona set the grid positions for Sunday, and Marc Marquez and Dani Pedrosa will occupy the fourth and sixth places, respectively, for round 7 of the season. In the qualifying session, the Repsol riders pushed for the first row right to the final minute, in which Aleix Espargaro and Maverick Viñales sprung a surprise to make it a one-two.
In the third free practice session, the Repsol Honda Team riders continued working on their setups for tomorrow. Marquez finished seventh and Pedrosa eleventh, forcing the latter to participate in Q1 – in which he placed first. Second and third in the final free practice, they faced an incredibly tight qualifying session to conclude the day. Marc Marquez again fought for the pole position, which finally went to Aleix Espargaro, and placed fourth, just 0.208s off the top spot. The reigning MotoGP World Champion will share the second row with Dani Pedrosa, who was sixth and only 0.382s off pole.
Marc Márquez >> Audio
4th – 1:40.754, 41 laps, 194 km
“Today went fairly well. To be honest, the objective was to get onto the front row; it’s a shame that in the end it eluded us, but Aleix [Espargaro] and Maverick [Viñales] were very fast. For tomorrow’s race, I think that Jorge [Lorenzo] has the best pace, although we shouldn’t forget about Valentino [Rossi] and also Dani [Pedrosa]. They are all dangerous, but we will try to give 100% in front of the home fans in order to be as close as possible to them. We’ll see if we can keep with them when we get to the end of the race.”
Dani Pedrosa >> Audio
6th – 1:40.928, 44 laps, 208 km
“It was a difficult qualifying session because at this track in particular the soft tyre peaks on the first lap and then drops down. We had to go through Q1, because this morning we had a problem and couldn’t go directly into Q2 after I made a small mistake on my final run in FP3. As has been typical recently, the times are very tight, so we will be starting from sixth for the race but we will continue working tomorrow morning in order to try and improve further.”
