Honda’s well-documented acceleration issues may be less of a limiting factor at the Silverstone MotoGP round as most of corners onto long straights are in third gear at the Northamptonshire circuit, not second at places like Sachsenring and the Red Bull Ring.
Championship leader Marc Marquez was bullish about his chances earlier today, saying he didn’t think their problems would be felt so much as they were in Austria.
“We know that here there are three big accelerations but in a different way. For example, in Austria the acceleration starts from second gear more or less and here it starts from third gear with more speed already in the middle of the corner,” said Marquez, speaking at the track.
“So I think this will be a little bit better for us but we will see. I will start with this mentality and we know that we will have a problem, but I don’t want to speak about this because we know it is something that is there.”
Marquez and Pedrosa focused on this problem during the Brno test and the former champion says they made some progress in the Czech Republic.
“Basically we tried to concentrate to try to understand our biggest problem in acceleration, for try to understand how we can improve for this year but also for the future with the new bike.
“Also we did a big change and tried to gain some tenths and there were some positive things, but then the overall package – the best one – was the one that I had from the weekend. We will try to use already some ideas in this circuit.
Pedrosa was much less upbeat, saying that he didn’t know what was going to happen as he also has problems with turning as well as acceleration.
“I don’t know what the feeling will be. I don’t how the tyres are, how they will be with the front in the chicanes and in the corners. Normally, we have problems to turn the bike, so we don’t know,” the Spaniard said earlier this evening.