Dani Pedrosa and Marc Marquez tackle first day of the Catalan Grand Prix

Marc Marquez and Dani Pedrosa began their preparations for the Catalan Grand Prix on a sunny opening day at the newly resurfaced Montmelo Circuit, which has a revised layout. Dani set the 12th fastest lap time in the FP1 session and the eighth fastest in FP2, wrapping up the day ninth in the combined standings.

Marc Marquez was in fine form beginning with the morning session, when he posted the third fastest lap time. The reigning World Champion was also keeping a very good pace on used tyres in the afternoon FP2 session, but a crash in the final phases cost him the chance to improve his performance, leaving him in 12th position on the combined timesheets.

Dani Pedrosa
9TH 1’39.655
“I think today was positive enough, as we were able to improve our rhythm over the course of the day, after a slow start. We managed to exploit the track time quite well, testing a lot of tyres. That’s also good from the perspective of the work we’re doing, because we already understand which one we want to work with. I think that’s an important step in view of the race. Another significant aspect we would like to improve is our speed over a single lap, but as I said, we gained some pace today and I’m happy with that.”

Marc Marquez
12TH 1’39.882
“Looking at the standings today, you could say we’re quite far back, but actually we’re not bad at all and most importantly, we worked very well on used tyres and have a good rhythm. We still have a small thing to adjust in the electronics setup, but we think we understood where we have to work; if we’re able to sort it out, we’ll have the possibility to improve a lot tomorrow. It seems that with the new asphalt, everything is very, very tight, and it’s more difficult to make a difference. There’s big difference between lapping on new tyres and on old tyres, so we must manage that aspect well.”