Finally Marc Márquez (Repsol Honda) and Álvaro Bautista (Go & Fun Honda Gresini) have been able to play a full day with the dry track and thus take full advantage of the second day of unofficial training at the circuit of Sepang ahead of the 2013 season of the MotoGP World Championship. Both drivers improved their times yesterday and at the end of the day, Marc Márquez managed to set the best time.
Marc Márquez has divided the day of training into two parts: in the morning, he has taken advantage to continue accumulating experience on the Honda RC213V and has begun to change the set-up to adapt it to his riding. In the afternoon, he climbed the 2013 prototype of the Honda, the same one that Dani Pedrosa could test in Valencia and on which the two test riders who are also in Sepang, Kousuke Akiyoshi and Takumi Takahashi, are working.
Already in the first outing to the track, Marc Márquez was able to match the record set the previous day to leave a better time of 2’01.355 after sixty laps to the track. This record is two seconds better than yesterday and is located a second of the best lap given in the track, in possession of Jorge Lorenzo after the qualifying practice at the Sepang Grand Prix this year and left a record of 2 ’00 .334.
For his part, Alvaro Bautista has continued to test the updates in the Showa suspensions and although he has improved in some aspects, the Toledo is not too satisfied with them. His best record was of 2’01.950 and both he and the team hope to be able to shoot something more in the wet to improve the set-up in these conditions. Tomorrow Alvaro Bautista will have new pieces of Nissin to improve the braking of his Honda.
Finally, the two Honda test riders, Kousuke Akiyoshi and Takumi Takahashi, have continued to test parts of the 2013 Honda engine. After 48 laps, Kousuke Akiyoshi left a time of 2’03.820 and Takumi Takahashi, in full period of adaptation to the motorcycle, of 2’07.360.
Statements by Marc Márquez:
Finally today we had the track dry all day. In the morning there were still some wet areas, but it has dried quite fast and we were able to go out to roll around 11:30, taking advantage of the rest of the day. In the first track we have already improved our times yesterday, which is a positive detail. Then we started to try different set-ups, and that has made me start to understand the bike better and my confidence has been increasing.
Today I have also tested the prototype 2013 and the sensations have been good, but right now the most important thing is that I take my time to learn to ride this MotoGP and adapt my driving style to this much bigger bike. It has been a great day, I hope that tomorrow is the same as today and we can do more laps to continue learning.
