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After constant rain throughout the day at Phillip Island on Thursday, the MotoGP World Championship held the first two Free Practice sessions for the Australian Grand Prix in sunny conditions on Friday.
Pol Espargaró has started the weekend in a positive way. At one of the Repsol Honda Team rider’s favourite tracks, he made steady progress, going eleventh in FP1 and third in FP2.
With a good feeling and riding more comfortably than at the last Grand Prix, he set a best time of 1:29.527, which placed him third on the combined timesheets.
Marc Márquez had a steady day of practice. The Repsol Honda Team rider was amongst the fastest riders for much of the day’s two sessions and continues to show that he is getting back to his best following his injury woes.
With a best lap of 1:29.775, Márquez was sixth on the combined timesheets.
Rider Statements
“It’s not easy to try things during a weekend, but I felt some positives with the new parts in the morning. Then in the afternoon we tried it again to confirm our findings, we used all our time to try these things and this is what you must do if you want to improve for the future. We can see that Honda is working, even with only three races left. I’ll keep using it tomorrow. Then we will see what is possible on Saturday and Sunday, the feeling on the bike is quite good and we can see that the potential is there. It’s great to be back at Phillip Island.”
“I felt really good today and the bike was also working really, really well today. From the morning I felt like I was fast over one lap and with our overall pace and then it was just about finding the last step with the new tyre. When we put a new tyre in this afternoon, it all worked, and I was able to enjoy riding. I love this place, the track, the weather, the cold and with the wind making everything a bit more complicated, my experience helped a lot. I think this circuit suits our bike and the objective is to of course stay inside the top positions all weekend.”