MARQUEZ FINISHES AHEAD OF RIVALS AFTER SECOND TEST IN SEPANG
Repsol Honda will be delighted by the way Marc Marquez, whose first day was ruined by a brake problem, responded to dominate the last two days. For the Spaniard, his main focus was on evaluating different chassis types, and tweaking the set ups on each to find the one he prefers.
He headed the timesheet's for the last two days, with his best lap of 1'59.115 putting him over 3 tenths of a second ahead of his nearest rivals. No one can accuse the reigning champion of resting on his laurels on the final day either, as he put in more laps than anyone else (73) on the final day. This included a stint of 19 laps where he managed 16 laps under the 2'01 barrier, and will leave Malaysia knowing that he is once again in a very strong position to retain his MotoGP title.
Dani Pedrosa showed good pace on day 1, finishing 2nd on the time sheets, but since then he had struggled to make much more progress until late on today when he managed to get in a flying lap just before the day ended. The two time 250cc World Champion managed to improve by over half a second during the test, and was one of the only riders to improve his time in the afternoon, finally breaking the 2 minute mark to finish in 7th.
After 3 days of intense testing, it was reigning MotoGP champion Marquez who laid down the early marker for the rest of the paddock. The weather has played a major part in each teams testing plans, with the searing heat during the day meaning that realistically riders could only really set flying laps within a small time frame when the sun wasn't at its peak. Most teams focused on developing the bike and finding their riders ideal set ups over the first two days, while today provided a chance for the teams to show their true pace this morning, before running race simulations this afternoon.
Comments
Post a Comment