Reigning MotoGP World Champion Jorge Lorenzo and title rival Marc Marquez finished today’s MotoGP practice sessions in Austria a fair distance off the pace but the pair have yet to try Michelin’s softer-option rear on which the Ducatis set their fastest laps.
Marquez was also at a disadvantage today as this was the first time he had ridden his RC213V at the track, so was quite happy with his laptimes on the harder rears and is confident he will be able to up his game tomorrow.
It has basically been a day to gather data for the race and to find the reference points with a MotoGP bike for this track, which is new. It’s short but it has many braking points, and we haven’t ridden here with carbon brakes before,” he said.
“All in all, I’m generally happy with how it went today; we’re tenth but it’s not our real position, as we didn’t use a new and softer rear spec tyre. We’ll continue working in the same direction tomorrow, as I think it’s the right one, with the aim to be at least in the top five and to fight for the podium on Sunday.”
Lorenzo is equally confident he can close the gap to the Ducatis: “There’s a difference between us and our rivals, but you know you have to work on your own bike and your own pace to try to improve it and that’s what we did. We tried to modify the bike and improve by some tenths and we got a good pace.
“We didn’t put the softer tyre on the rear like some other riders, so we have some margin to be even closer. Especially in the morning it was very cold and it’s only been on a few occasions that it was colder than today. It was tricky because we had to be careful in some corners to avoid crashing. In the afternoon it was a little bit better, with the temperature a few degrees higher, so we had a better feeling but we hope tomorrow the sun will shine a bit more and we’ll have more confidence.”
The pair both managed to stay in the mid to low 1'25s on the harder rear with Lorenzo putting in ten laps in the 1'25s in free practice two while Marquez managed one less.