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Marc Márquez completed a positive first day at the Lusail International Circuit. Returning to the Qatari track two years after his last appearance there -he had not raced at the circuit since 2019-, the Repsol Honda Team rider managed to finish the day just 35 thousandths off the best time.
With a best time of 1’53.467, Márquez is in a prime position to make it through to the first Q2 session of 2022, pending FP3 on Saturday.
Espargaró also started the first Friday of the season with a good feeling. The Repsol Honda Team rider remained among the top five times for much of the second session of the day, leading the way on several occasions.
At the end of the day, Espargaró set a best time of 1’53.963, giving him a provisional place in Q2 for tomorrow.
Rider Statements
“Overall I think we are in a better position than we were expecting and I think that a good target for us tomorrow is to aim for the front two rows. We still need to understand how to improve our rhythm a bit to close the gap to the top. I feel like I am riding quite ‘clean’, I am still working to understand the front of the new bike so my riding does not yet look like ‘Marquez style’ but the lap time is coming. It’s about being patient, it’s very early in the season and this is normally a track where we struggle a bit. It’s still Friday though, the weekend has just started. Today I pushed, tomorrow I will push again.”
“It felt good today, especially at a track like here in Qatar where usually I struggle a little bit. We had a good run with our first tyre in FP2 but on the second tyre we had some problems so couldn’t push to the maximum. What’s good is that our time from the first tyre is good enough for the top ten, it’s a big improvement over last year where we had to push a lot just to achieve this – it shows the work the team has done over winter. Tomorrow will be a busy day of trying things, to be fast over one lap and also looking to be fast for the race.”