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The Sachsenring circuit hosted the first day of practice for the German Grand Prix, and the Repsol Honda Team riders debuted a new aerodynamic package.
Pol Espargaró finished the day in a positive fifth position on the combined timesheets. He was fourth in FP1 with a time of 1:22.010, despite a crash at Turn 3 early on in the session.
Another crash in FP2 at the same corner did not impede him from continuing to improve, and he ended the day fifth with a 1:21.143 best lap.
Marc Márquez was top of the timesheets from the beginning, stopping the clock at 1:21.660. It was the first time that he had led a dry session since the warmup for the 2020 Spanish Grand Prix (having done so in FP3 of the French GP in the wet).
In the second session, Márquez lowered his FP1 time by almost 4 tenths, leading for much of the runout. In the final minutes he elected not to use a soft tyre and dropped to twelfth, with a 1:21.291.
Qualifying for MotoGP takes place on Saturday at 2:10pm CEST.
Rider statements
“Here I feel less physical limitations, honestly I was expecting zero problems but I still don’t think I am riding at my best. I can manage it and we have a good pace at the moment but for sure a focus for tomorrow is working on riding style. I didn’t put a new tyre at the end, but I spoke with the team as I didn’t feel like I had the energy to do it. We are working to understand many things with the bike when it’s working well here. Our pace is looking good but it’s not the best on track at the moment.”
“Crashing was not part of the plan, but I am trying to find the limit now, rather than in the race. We are figuring it out but Turn 3 is causing some problems at the moment and this is why I fell there. Over one lap we are quite good, but the crashes meant we couldn’t really do as long a run today as we had hoped. It was a bit of a messy day honestly, but we have the speed here. Tomorrow we need a smoother day, less crashes and more in control. The bike is working well here this weekend.”