Positive First Day For Marquez and Pedrosa at Le Mans

Troy Siahaan
by Troy Siahaan

Marc Marquez and Dani Pedrosa started working on the setup of their RC213V on the French GP’s opening day, which took place in fine albeit a bit cool weather conditions, with max air and ground temperatures of 22° and 27° C, respectively.

Marquez set the third-fastest time both in the morning and the afternoon sessions while working on electronics and on the general setup of the bike, looking to improve his pace on the first and third sectors of the track.

Pedrosa had a very positive start to the day, clocking the fastest time in FP1. He also started the afternoon session quite strong, breaking trough the 1’34” barrier in his first run before trying some setup changes that didn’t help him to make an additional step forward as he had hoped.

Both riders tried the new rear tyre that Michelin brought and look forward to continuing their work on it, beginning with tomorrow’s FP3 session at 9:55 a.m.local time.

{"attachment_id":"56253"}Marc Marquez

3RD 1’33.313

“Today was demanding. We knew this circuit would cause us to struggle a bit, but we’re overcoming things fairly well. I have a good pace and I’m feeling good, although we’re losing some time on both of this circuit’s hard acceleration points; it’s something that’s difficult to recover from afterwards. We’re working on this aspect and we’ll see if we can take another step forward tomorrow, both with the electronics and with the setup of the bike. It will also be important to make a good decision about which tyres we’ll use on Sunday, although it seems that both of the compounds we have available are pretty good.”

{"attachment_id":"56254"}Dani Pedrosa

8TH 1’33.748

“We started the day well, but in the end we didn’t finish off as we had hoped. The start of the second session also went well, but after that we were evaluating some technical changes that didn’t give us the results we wanted, and made me lose pace. We won’t make many changes to the bike’s setup tomorrow, in order to try to concentrate on my riding and on improving the pace for both the race and qualifying.”

Results Session

Pos.RiderNumNationTeamTime/Gap
1LORENZO Jorge99SPAMovistar Yamaha MotoGP1’32.830
2IANNONE Andrea29ITADucati Team0.339
3MARQUEZ Marc93SPARepsol Honda Team0.483
4ESPARGARO Pol44SPAMonster Yamaha Tech 30.576
5DOVIZIOSO Andrea4ITADucati Team0.744
6ESPARGARO Aleix41SPATeam Suzuki Ecstar0.765
7VINALES Maverick25SPATeam Suzuki Ecstar0.783
8PEDROSA Dani26SPARepsol Honda Team0.918
9BARBERA Hector8SPAAvintia Racing1.121
10ROSSI Valentino46ITAMovistar Yamaha MotoGP1.144
11PETRUCCI Danilo9ITAOcto Pramac Racing1.220
12CRUTCHLOW Cal35GBRLCR Honda1.223
13REDDING Scott45GBROcto Pramac Racing1.253
14SMITH Bradley38GBRMonster Yamaha Tech 31.476
15BAZ Loris76FRAAvintia Racing1.534
16LAVERTY Eugene50IREAspar MotoGP Team1.595
17HERNANDEZ Yonny68COLAspar MotoGP Team1.701
18MILLER Jack43AUSEstrella Galicia 0,0 Marc VDS1.826
19BRADL Stefan6GERAprilia Racing Team Gresini1.912
20RABAT Tito53SPAEstrella Galicia 0,0 Marc VDS1.959
21BAUTISTA Alvaro19SPAAprilia Racing Team Gresini2.259
Troy Siahaan
Troy Siahaan

Troy's been riding motorcycles and writing about them since 2006, getting his start at Rider Magazine. From there, he moved to Sport Rider Magazine before finally landing at Motorcycle.com in 2011. A lifelong gearhead who didn't fully immerse himself in motorcycles until his teenage years, Troy's interests have always been in technology, performance, and going fast. Naturally, racing was the perfect avenue to combine all three. Troy has been racing nearly as long as he's been riding and has competed at the AMA national level. He's also won multiple club races throughout the country, culminating in a Utah Sport Bike Association championship in 2011. He has been invited as a guest instructor for the Yamaha Champions Riding School, and when he's not out riding, he's either wrenching on bikes or watching MotoGP.

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