First impressions from Marquez and Pedrosa after FP1 at the Red Bull Grand Prix of the Americas

2017-04-22 13:41
Marc Marquez and Dani Pedrosa started action this morning at the Red Bull Grand Prix of the Americas, setting the second- and seventh-fastest lap times, respectively, in the first Free Practice. Each of the Repsol Honda men spent the entire session on the same tyre combination: medium-front/medium-rear for Marc, soft-front/medium-rear for Dani.

Following are the first impressions from Marc and Dani. An additional release will follow at the end of the day, as usual.

Marc Marquez
2ND 2'05.500
“Today I felt quite good on the bike. We did two long runs with the two bikes set up differently, one with a setup similar to what we used in Argentina and another very different in order to understand which works better for this track this weekend. Overall, the feeling wasn’t so bad; I think we did a good job on used tyres and we found a good pace, though we have a margin for improvement, especially on the electronic side. The circuit has changed a lot from last year, as it’s now very bumpy. This afternoon we’ll try another tyre and we’ll work more on the bike’s setup, also looking to cope with the bumps better.”

Marc Marquez
Dani Pedrosa
7TH 2'06.109
“As a first session, I think it went ‘okay.’ The track this year is incredibly bumpy. There are a few points where the bumps are huge, in the braking points for turn one, five, six and ten, when we move to the left, and on the back straight it’s like a whoop section in motocross! We need to work on the electronics but of course it’s not easy. Today we tried a new exhaust but we need to work on it more and to gather more data. We worked the whole session with the same tyres, and the feeling wasn’t bad, but we’ll try to improve further.”

Dani Pedrosa
FREE PRACTICE 1 Results

Pos. Rider Num Nation Team Time/Gap
1
VINALES
Maverick 25 SPA Movistar Yamaha MotoGP 2'04.923
2
MARQUEZ
Marc 93 SPA Repsol Honda Team 0.577
3
DOVIZIOSO
Andrea 4 ITA Ducati Team 0.681
4
ZARCO
Johann 5 FRA Monster Yamaha Tech 3 0.867
5
BAUTISTA
Alvaro 19 SPA Pull&Bear Aspar Team 0.910
6
LORENZO
Jorge 99 SPA Ducati Team 1.094

Source: Honda Racing Corporation

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