Marc Marquez (Repsol Honda Team) and teammate Dani Pedrosa put in the laps at Valencia on Day 2 amd were P1 and P2 respectively, testing a host of new things with the new RC213V delivered for them to try – and they have enough information to now step back over winter until the first test of next year at Sepang. Marquez says that some things were better and they have a lot of information, and they’ll double check it in Malaysia.
“Today we got a lot of information,” says Marquez, “but now it’s important to find the way and understand what we need, and what the plan will be for Malaysia – that will be the next time we ride the bike, in January. But today has been a good, positive day and the pace was good so I’m happy. First of all with the prototype bike we had some small problems, that’s normal when you have a new engine and bike. We have some positives and negatives. Then on the current bike we tried some things that were working better than what we have right now – I don’t want to say it’s all confirmed but in Malaysia we will retry all these thing and choose the right way because Valencia is also a small track.”
Asked about the decision to not head to Jerez, with HRC to be represented there by LCR Honda’s Cal Crutchlow, Marquez said it’s s simple reason: “We don’t have more things to try. It’s important to confirm things on another track but we have a lot of information and we’d rather spend those days on another track.”
Pedrosa, meanwhile, affirmed how much work the team had got through – and says there is good progress made. But the Little Samurai wouldn’t pick out anything specific, having worked on many different combinations throughout Day 2: “I started the day with my race bike to check the track, then I moved to the new bike. After yesterday’s analysis we went further with more testing. We tried a new setup with mapping and with geometry, to understand the new bike because it’s not just about performance, it’s also about understanding what the bike is doing to the tyres and what it’s doing on the track, what’s better or worse. So we made some progress but we are still understanding what the bike is doing. But we collected as much information as we can today. We tried a new swingarm, and a new rear tyre, which is just a new compound on one side. And we tried a new fork. A lot of testing and it’s hard to pick out something good – different bikes and everything was a mix. It’s a short time for testing, and important before the break.”
Next up for some is Jerez, before it’s a long winter running up to the first test at Sepang.