Repsol Honda’s Marc Marquez ended the first day of hostilities at the Ricardo Tormo Circuit ahead of the Grand Prix of Valencia second fastest, forcing the Spaniard to hail Friday as ‘positive’.
Marquez got off to a steady start this morning, taking the chequered flag third fastest having focussed his time evaluating the softer compound front and rear Michelin tyres. The Spaniard managed a 1m31.442s, which was a hundredth adrift of Valentino Rossi and four tenths off of the Italian’s teammate Jorge Lorenzo.
In the afternoon session, the Honda rider used the much warmer conditions to try the harder tyres available this weekend. Marquez stayed with the harder option front and rear for the entirety of FP2, putting in an impressive string of laps in the latter stages of the session. The Spaniard managed five successive laps in the high 1m30s bracket, the fastest of which, a 1m30.710s, putting him second on the time sheets.
Though still very early in the weekend, no-one else managed to link together a series of laps as quick as that and this has left the three-time MotoGP World Champion feeling rather positive heading into FP3 and qualifying tomorrow.
“Today went quite well and I think the overall assessment has to be positive, because it’s important to start well,” he said.
“We focused our work on testing all of the tyres; in the morning we used the soft compound for both the front and rear and did quite a few laps with them. In the afternoon I rode the entire time with the hard front and rear. We did a lot of laps to test the different carcasses of the front tyre, and I think we’ve taken a good step forward.”
Despite ending the day happy with his performance, Marquez reckons there is still more to be unlocked says that the likes of Rossi, Lorenzo and Suzuki’s Maverick Vinales are all on a ‘similar level’ to the Honda rider at present.
“We ended the day happy with the work we had done, and tomorrow we’ll try to continue in the same way, because I think that along with Lorenzo, Rossi and Viñales, we’re all at a very similar level. I’m happy with my pace, but I think tomorrow we can improve it a little more.”
Comments.
Loading comments…