Repsol Honda Team rider tops first day of practice for Czech Republic GP, with Dani Pedrosa tenth.
Just five days after completing the most recent round of the MotoGP World Championship season, Marc Marquez left behind the problems of Austria to head the first day of practice for the Czech Republic Grand Prix. The eleventh round of the year began with Marquez and teammate Dani Pedrosa sixth and ninth, respectively, in the first session. Both Repsol Honda Team riders improved their lap times in the afternoon, with the World Championship leader stopping the clock at 1:55.840 to top the timesheets. Pedrosa finished the day in tenth place, with a best time of 1:56.662.
Marc Marquez, 1st 1:55.840 >> Audio
“Today was a positive day because we were able to improve significantly from the first to the second session. We’re still not where we would like to be, and although the position is good, the important thing is to work with the race in mind. In this respect, Jorge [Lorenzo] and Valentino [Rossi] have a very steady pace. We’ve been trying out many things, especially this afternoon, and now we have to assess what worked better for us and what we must continue looking at.
In the afternoon we were a bit lucky to save a possible crash similar to one I had in 2014 at this same track during a testing session. This one was even bigger because it was very long and my lean angle was about 67.5 degrees. I just lost the front and when I saved it I told myself, Okay, let’s go back to the box to cool down a bit, because I was a little bit excited. It means that we’re pushing hard to find our pace. Tomorrow we’ll see if we can take another step forward, especially in terms of race pace, to be able to aim for the podium on Sunday. If we do that, then why shouldn’t we target the victory too?”
Dani Pedrosa, 10th 1:56.662 >> Audio
“Today we worked on two completely different settings from the morning to the afternoon and I think we made some improvements over the day. The changes we made were quite extreme, and tomorrow we’ll do some more comparisons to make our final choices. At this moment there are things good and less good in both settings, so we must choose carefully and then keep improving on them. Our position may not be the best yet but I think we’re closer to the front here in Brno than in the last race, so we have to keep working in this way. My last run today was a bit better and we need to work from that.”
