Marc Marquez declared himself happy with the Sepang test so far despite crashing out in the closing minutes of day two. The world champion slid off at turn two as drizzle began to fall, preventing him from carrying out a time attack and keeping him back in seventh place.
Marquez was seen running a striking new aero fairing on his Repsol Honda RC213V, an update which bore similarities to Ducati’s ‘hammerhead fairing’ and although he isn’t completely happy with the set-up, the Spaniard sees cause for optimism.
“Today I’m very happy because we made some steps forward and I felt really good on my bike, especially in the afternoon, when we put everything in place and I did my fastest lap when the temperature was highest. Besides continuing our work on the engine and setup, we tried a new fairing, and when you do that type of test you have to adjust the bike’s balance a little bit. We’ll need to do more laps to collect more data and get used to riding with it. There are a few things we need to improve more, several areas of the setup that we have to adjust, but so far I’m happy with our pace and think we’re working well. Unfortunately, when we fit a new tyre at the end of the day, it started to rain a bit. I lost the front at turn two even though I wasn’t really pushing, but it wasn’t important.”
Team-mate Dani Pedrosa had topped the timesheets on day one and was unconcerned despite falling to twelfth, adding that Monday was an experimental day.
“Today we had a full-day session that allowed us to carry out many tests. We mainly used the new engine specifications, and we worked a lot on a new fairing and other combinations with the aerodynamics. We also worked on the suspension and tyres because with this type of work, you have to make many adjustments to the settings. Some aspects were good right away—the wheelie control was better, and we were able to apply more torque on corner-exit—but we need to improve other aspects and also try everything again at a different track. Anyway, the feeling was generally positive again today; we were quite precise in our work and managed to follow our testing plan well. Tomorrow will be the final day, and we’ll try and work more on the details.”