Marc Marquez has sounded a note of caution after topping the timesheets in first practice ahead of the Qatar Grand Prix, saying that track evolution will see lap times plummet. The world champion led a Repsol Honda 1-2 on Thursday evening and while he was happy with the start made, he doesn’t think the FP1 result will necessarily be representative what follows.
“Today went pretty well. It is always important to make a good start to the weekend. I felt good and the feeling was similar to that which we had in pre-season testing, although maybe there was a little less grip. We tried some things that we had prepared after the test and this went well. Tomorrow we will try to keep progressing, but we can’t forget that the track surface here will improve a lot and the times will come down.”
Dani Pedrosa finished the opening session a tenth shy of his teammate in second place and feels he has a good base to build from in Fridays second and third sessions.
“We have completed the first session of the year and we have done quite well. Now we are going to work on the bike to in preparation for the coming days. We need to keep taking steps forward as the weekend goes on and keep improving our pace. The track was in quite good condition and we’ll see how it evolves over the course of the Grand Prix weekend.”
