MotoGP: Pedrosa, Marquez end Qatar first day with mixed feelings

The 2016 MotoGP World Championship officially commenced this evening in Qatar, with a single free-practice session for the premier class. Rain had fallen on-and-off all day Wednesday, but the track was in generally good condition when action got underway at 8:55 p.m. Thursday local time. At the end of the 45 minute session, Repsol Honda Team riders Dani Pedrosa and Marc Marquez were classified seventh and eight respectively, with Dani setting his fastest time of 1’56.098 on his seventh lap and Marc recording a 1’56.258 time on his 15^th and final lap.

FP2 and FP3 will commence tomorrow at 6 p.m. and 8:55 p.m. local time, respectively.

Dani Pedrosa

7TH  1’56.098

“Luckily, the track was in good condition and this practice was a useful start for us to gather information, because we started working on the setup we used on the last day of test and then decided to try a big change. We need to work more on this idea and I hope tomorrow we’ll be able to build on it. We’ll study the data we’ve gathered very thoroughly in order to improve in the direction we feel could make the bike faster. We’ll try to reduce the gap, tenth by tenth, working on power delivery and chassis settings.”

Marc Marquez

8TH  1’56.258

“Today the 2016 season started for real. It was not the easiest FP1 I’ve ridden in, but we tried to improve gradually. The feeling was not very good, but we worked hard and we tried a lot of things out, so now we have to see what has changed between the test and today. We know that in Qatar the track conditions change a lot, so we will try to continue to evolve and get close to the top riders.”

FP1 Results