Marc Marquez was relieved to have ridden with relatively few problems on his return to action on Thursday at Losail. The world champion broke his leg in a winter training accident with today his first ride on a MotoGP bike since and although he was only eleventh fastest, Marquez was happy with how it went.
“I am fairly happy with how the first session went, because I haven’t been on the bike in a while. I didn’t think my foot would bother me so much – especially on the right hand corners – although at the end of the session I felt better and this gives me hope of improving tomorrow. We are going to try to follow the same working strategy as today. In terms of the times, we aren’t too far off Jorge, Valentino and Dani – and it’s normal that the riders who were here for the test a fortnight ago are fast right from the get-go”.
Repsol Honda teammate Dani Pedrosa was sixth quickest this evening and felt he did the best possible on such a low-grip track surface.
“We had a few problems today with grip, which is something that some of the riders who rode here at the test two weeks ago had commented about before. There isn’t much grip on the track and that means we have to try to get the most out of the bike under these circumstances. We’ll see if the track improves with a little more rubber laid down, giving us more traction. Today we just didn’t really have any, even though the track was in good condition. We still hope to improve session-by-session”.
