Good weather conditions favoured the start of day one of the first MotoGP pre-season test in Sepang, Malaysia on Monday, until the rain began falling at 4 p.m.
The track had opened at 10, and Marc Marquez and Dani Pedrosa headed out 15 minutes later to get to work defining the setup of the RC213V, trying different engine configurations and spending also time testing new Michelin tyres.
The afternoon downpour also gave Marc and Dani the opportunity to complete a few laps with a wet configuration.
“The feeling today wasn’t so bad considering that the first day after the holiday break is always a bit demanding for the rider and the team!” Marquez said. “We’ve been testing two bikes with different engine configurations, but we mainly concentrated on one, playing with electronics, geometry, setup and so on."
"We gathered a lot of information, and now we’ll keep working. We also decided to make the best of the situation when the rain arrived and did some laps in the wet, but we look forward to continuing testing in the dry tomorrow to better understand and exploit the potential of our bike.”
Their best lap times for the day were 2’00.738 on lap 25 of 56 for Marquez (ninth) and 2’00.970 on lap 25 of 44 for Pedrosa (13th).
“Today I basically got reacquainted with riding my bike, with the track and the tyres, and I also rode for the first time on the new asphalt here at Sepang,” added Dani Pedrosa. “We’ve started working on the bike as we have two different engine configurations to test. We mainly worked with one bike. We also had the chance to ride in the wet on that bike, and we got good information. Hopefully it won’t rain tomorrow, and I think we’ll be able to go more deep in the testing than we were today.”
Testing will continue for two more days.
