A mix of rain and hail fell in the early afternoon of the second day of free practice in Qatar, adversely affecting the level of grip during both the FP2 and FP3 sessions.

Marc Marquez and Dani Pedrosa continued working on the general setup of their bikes for the race, and on selecting the appropriate Michelin tyres. By the end of the evening, Marc and Dani had both earned direct passage into tomorrow’s Q2 session, the former with a 1’54.912” time set in yesterday’s FP1, and the latter with a 1’55.113” mark in today’s FP3.

Saturday -  a 30-minute FP4 session and the 15-minute Q2 session await the Repsol Honda duo, at 7:55 p.m. and 9 p.m. local time, respectively.


Marc Marquez - 3rd 1'54.912 (in FP1)

“Today the track was a bit different from yesterday and it was more demanding to find the pace and a fast lap. Yesterday I had felt very good, but today we made many changes to the bike, looking for more grip and to improve on corner exit, but we didn’t get the results we were hoping for. So now we’ll re-check everything, and tomorrow we’ll take a little step back with the settings. A positive point from today is that we again found the confidence in the front that was missing yesterday. Also, the feeling on used tyres this afternoon wasn’t bad. Anyway, we still have work to do to improve our rhythm to be able to fight for the podium on Sunday.”

Dani Pedrosa - 7th 1'55.113 (in FP3)

“In today’s first session we started making some little changes to the setup to continue improving our feeling. However, the day wasn’t the best for getting good feedback because the rain and sand made the surface very dirty and the grip very low, especially during the earlier session. In the end we just decided to not change the setup so much and to wait for the track to improve a little bit in FP3, when we worked for the race. Tomorrow we’ll see what weather we have, as we’d like to improve the mapping and the bike’s general setup a little bit more, besides trying to make a good tyre choice.”