If the reigning World Champion had achieved the best time during the first day of testing, he and his team focused on consistency on Thursday, with formidable efficiency.
The speed was there and Marquez took second place behind Maverick Vinales, 0.462 behind the new Yamaha rider. But there were many things to try and perfect, including the new tires offered by Michelin. On the engine side, which caused the most problems during last year's tests, the situation seemed significantly better than at the start of 2016. The Honda team was not really spoiled on this day with a throat problem for Dani Pedrosa, who still courageously rode although diminished, and the loss of the injured Tito Rabat.
« It's been a very hard day at work, and I'm a little tired, but that was the plan we made for today with the team and we stuck to it. commented Marc. Together with my engineers, we decided to run a lot of laps to try some things, and we focused on consistency as constantly as possible, trying to avoid any mistakes. »
Marquez posted an incredible series of 12 consecutive laps between 1'29.4 and 1'29.7 (1:29.723, 1:29.725, 1:29.580, 1:29.486, 1:29.533, 1:29.799, 1:29.552, 1:29.699, 1:29.616, 1:29.707, 1:29.612 and 1:29.500), being by far the only one to achieve such a great performance.
“I also did two long runs at the end of the day, to try different configurations of the electronics, which allowed us to gather a lot of information. Anyway, as I said yesterday, we are still missing something, because I'm not 100% comfortable, but we are working in the right direction. I hope that these two long series of rounds will allow us to find the areas where we can take a step forward. I also tried a new Michelin front tire and tomorrow we will try the rear, because today we didn't have time to do it ».
#AusTest | Highlights of Day 2 #MM93 #DP26 #RC213V #MotoGP pic.twitter.com/owdIptlMDz
- Repsol Honda Team (@HRC_MotoGP) February 16, 2017
