Repsol Honda Team’s Marc Marquez and Dani Pedrosa tried Honda’s new aero-fairing on Monday at Sepang, as did HRC test rider and LCR Honda Castrol rider Cal Crutchlow. At Yamaha initial reports were quite positive apropos their innovations, whereas Marquez remained little more reserved – but chiefly because he feels they need to make a few adjustments to setup before drawing a final conclusion.
“Today I’m really happy because we made some steps forward, which is important and I feel really good,” says Marquez of Day 2 as a whole, despite a late crash. Going on to talk about the new fairing, the number 93 was a little moe cautious: “We tried the new fairing but when you try that I think you need to change the bike balance. Still in some areas I feel good and others not so much, but I need to do more laps and get used to that.”
Crutchlow said similar of the fairing in some ways, but found more positives than negatives.
“What Honda has brought here is good, I feel positive with a lot of things,” says the Brit, “and today we tried the new fairing where again there were positives and negatives, but I think more positives, which is very good. We know that the Japanese have been working very hard back at HRC and now we have to look forward to tomorrow.”
Pushed more on the aero, Crutchlow echoed Marquez’ need for some adjustments.
“It created problems in other areas and we had to adjust the settings. We didn’t adjust the settings of the bike to configure it well, but overall I was pleased with how it worked.”
Day 3 sees action at Sepang back underway at 10:00 (GMT +8).