One second separated Repsol Honda’s Pol Espargaró from his elder brother at the top of the Sepang Test MotoGP times on Saturday.

Espargaró completed the first day of 2022 ninth overall with a fastest lap of 1’59.353, just 0.066s behind HRC teammate Marc Marquez and three-tenths ahead of LCR’s Takaaki Nakagami, in 12th. Pleased with his evaluation of the updated RC213V over 64 laps, the Spaniard is confident Honda is heading in the right direction with its quartet of riders all running the same machinery for the coming year.

“Yeah, it feels good because you see the future for the Honda bringing, not just to the factory riders two new 2022 bikes, also the satellite guys are using the 2022 bikes,” Espargaró confirmed.

“This is something very important. We understand last year that we need to work together as a manufacturer and Honda makes a huge effort to bring all bikes for all the riders which is going to help us a lot to build this project together. Marc, Alex [Marquez] and Taka, they are super talented riders and sure, together with me we are going to build a proper bike in just five days of testing which one already is gone. So with four days of testing ahead, you need the team work to make from a completely new bike, a good bike to start the season. Season is here, round the corner and I think the job today has been good.

“With a completely new bike we have done good results but hopefully the best is yet to come tomorrow and also in Mandalika.”

With day one of the new season under his belt, the 30-year-old has yet to uncover any obstacles for the new project, however, the importance of Saturday performance is firmly on his mind.

“Sure the thing we are gonna miss more, I mean it’s gonna be harder but this is something natural, even with the new bike or the old bike, is going to be the qualifying,” he explained. “We have many Ducatis on the grid. Today I was mainly working on mediums, at the end everyone put the soft tyres, some riders put even two soft tyres to make the lap times and we didn’t. So tomorrow morning and in Mandalika we are gonna work quite a lot on it.

“We need a fast bike but we had many things to try today that we were not able to focus in just one lap. We needed laps, which was why we were using the medium tyres. The medium tyres keep longer on laps and we could try many, many things but tomorrow morning I think we are gonna focus on the soft to try to make a lap time where we are because this is so important. Ducatis are, as we have seen with Bastianini today, they are very strong still in one lap and we need to fight with them for it.”