Marquez: We’re still missing something
Repsol Honda’s Marc Marquez ended the second day of testing from Phillip Island second on the time sheets after completing a massive 107 laps, but says that something is still amiss with the new ‘big-bang-style’ engine.
Marquez shot to the top of the pile for the first time during any of the 2017 pre-season winter tests yesterday, admitting that improvements had been made but that there was still a lot of work to do on the electronics side.
The Spaniard complained of a ‘connection’ problem when getting on the throttle, which isn’t punching the RC213V out of the turns how he’d like and robbing him of some comfort.
“We still must work because we are not comfortable in some areas,” he told crash.net following yesterday’s running.
“The engine is smooth. The power is normal, not very powerful. But with the electronics – the connection with the gas, the engine and rear wheel – still I don’t feel comfortable.”
Interestingly, Marquez made reference to the fact that the engine note is different to what he has been used to with the old ‘screamer’ motor and that this could partly be the cause of his comfort issue.
“Maybe it’s because we were using one type of engine for many, many years and I was riding in one way, and now with this one you need to change a little bit,” he said.
“In the end your riding style is the same, because this is something that is so difficult to change. But you need to understand how is this engine, because the noise is different, then you feel that you are riding slow… but you need to be patient.”
Today saw Marquez hammer in the laps on his Honda, completing 107 laps and two full race distances, posting a seriously impressive run of 1m29s laps during each. He slotted into second on the time sheets on a 1m29.309s.
During his race runs he tried different electronics set-ups, and hopes that the data gathered will allow the team to further improve their problems tomorrow as he admits that something still isn’t quite right.
“Together with my engineers we decided to do many laps to try a few things, trying to avoid any mistakes. I also did two long runs at the end of the day, to try different configurations of the electronics, and that allowed us to gather a lot of information.
“Anyway, as I said yesterday, we’re still missing something because I’m not 100% comfortable, but we’re working in a good way. Hopefully these two long runs will allow us to find the areas where we can take a step forward.”
Marquez’s team-mate Dani Pedrosa spent much of the day in the garage due to a throat infection, but managed 40 laps of the Phillip Island circuit towards the end of the session and was 16th fastest overall.