Repsol Honda’s Marc Marquez and Dani Pedrosa each made a strong start to the weekend on Friday at the Grand Premio Movistar de Aragon.

Marquez, who rates Aragon as one of his favourite tracks, finished a chilly FP1 in third position, behind Andrea Iannone (Pramac Racing) and Aleix Espargaro (NGM Forward Racing). A time of 1’49.290s had Marquez just 0.295s behind pace setter Iannone on his updated Ducati.

Pedrosa finished further down the order in fifth for the opening session. FP2 two saw Pedrosa’s time improve by almost a whole second, down to a 1’48.734s. This put the experienced Repsol Honda rider third overall.

Most of FP2 had Marquez comfortably leading by over half a second, however in the final stages Andrea Dovizioso (Ducati Team) took advantage of a soft tyre to go top. Marquez remained second in the session, and overall, with a 1’48.328 set on his ninth lap.

“Our first day here went well and I enjoyed riding in front of the home fans. I felt good on the bike and had a good pace, which is what we were focusing on the most today,” commented Marquez.

He added “The track was quite slippery but I like it like this. However, tomorrow we will try to define which tyres to use and refine the setup, then see if we can get onto the front row for Sunday and have a great race.”

Pedrosa commented,

“We tried the soft and hard tyres and it is still difficult to say which is better on the rear, but the intermediate worked well for us on the front. We have to keep putting in laps at this circuit to improve our feeling, because this is a track where the tyres give plenty of grip at the start and then performance drops off, so you need to get used to finding pace with used tyres.”



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