Marquez tops opening day at Aragon

Marc Marquez charges

It was a positive start to the Aragon Grand Prix for the Repsol Honda Team, with Championship leader Marc Marquez topping Friday’s standings.

Marc Marquez – 1st Repsol Honda
“Today we worked quite well and improved a lot from morning to afternoon, especially with the rear tire. It was our first day at the track this season and we had to adjust the setting of the bike and the electronics. We must also keep working in this way tomorrow. In the end of FP2 everyone put on a new rear tire, even us. This was maybe the first Friday that we did that this year! It’s important for understanding the outcome of a few things we changed on the bike. Now we have less doubts, but also we want to reconfirm something tomorrow. Luckily the weather is fine, and actually very hot. Ducati has tested here so we don’t want to leave anything out in order to be at same level."

Jorge Lorenzo (Ducati Team #99) – 2nd – 1’47.520
“I’m satisfied with today, especially because we made a step forward and we improved our performance from the morning to the afternoon. I felt really good on the bike, especially in my final exits in FP2, and that’s a good sign. I think that the lap time I set will be good enough to take me though directly into Q2 and so tomorrow we will be able to focus on improving our pace and work in view of the race. Overall, I’m happy with the feeling and now we only have to sort out a few details and try and improve a bit in every corner."

Andrea Dovizioso (Ducati Team #04) – 3rd – 1’47.835
“Today has been very positive, because we were able to start off the day by immediately regaining the good feeling we had achieved in the test in August, and so now we’ve already got some pretty clear ideas about the tyres and the set-up. This will enable us to work on the details tomorrow because I think that the conditions will improve a bit and so we’ll be able to understand how the tyres will really behave. As always we must try and be quick while consuming the tyres as little as possible: in every track this is the characteristic, but here at Aragón it’s even more important. At the moment there are three of us who have a very similar pace, but it won’t be enough and so tomorrow we’ll have to improve a bit more."

Friday Results