The final pre-season test of 2018 began this afternoon at Qatar’s Losail circuit. The track opened at 1 pm but Marc Marquez and Dani Pedrosa headed out around 2.30 pm, when the temperature started to drop. The session’s temperature range was fairly wide, from 28°C air / 38° C track in the beginning to 21° C air / 24° C track at the end.

Dani was lapping at a good pace (his fastest time of 1’55.555” on lap 31 of 37 placed him 11th overall, just 0.502” off the top) when he crashed in turn 2 and hit his left hand, causing him to miss the remaining three hours in the session. A medical check at the Clinica Mobile proved negative for any major injury, and Dani will be back in action tomorrow.

Marc today started work on his RC213V’s general setup and wrapped up the action around 8 pm, finishing 10th in the classification with his time of 1’55.545” on lap 26 of 47.

Testing will continue for the next two days.


Marc Marquez - 10th 1'55.545 (on lap 26 of 47)

“Today we started our test in Qatar looking to find a base setup and focusing on electronics. The engine was a bit aggressive at first, but in the end we managed to find a way to improve the setting and be smoother. We need to improve some more, but it was good for it being the first day, and now we have two more sessions to keep working and try to be as consistent here as we were at the previous tests. We know that this track is a bit more challenging for us compared to others, but I enjoy it and we’re not that far off. Tomorrow we’ll start to go deeper on a few details.”

Dani Pedrosa - 11th 1'55.555 (on lap 31 of 37)

“We started the day well and did several good runs, considering that the track is always a bit dirty here the first day. Unfortunately, I first had a small crash that might have been my fault, and a few laps later I had another, bigger one, in turn 2. I may have hit a bump there or went a bit off line, I don’t know; for sure that spot is quite tricky, and I lost the front very quickly. After that we decided to stop for the day. Apart from that, the feeling on the bike was quite good and we were able to keep a good rhythm. Tomorrow we’ll keep working on the bike’s setting and see how the track improves and which tyres we’ll use. This track is challenging, as conditions change from day to day, and also the temperature drops quite a lot when evening falls. We’ll need to do more laps to try and better figure out the general setup before going into more detailed testing.”