Positive day for Marquez but "Lorenzo is stronger"

Marc Marquez was second fastest in Valencia and ready to put “the hardest week of my life” behind him. The Spaniard was one tenth of a second slower than Jorge Lorenzo but felt that his pace on used tyres could be the difference during the race.

“Today we can say it was a positive day for us,” said Marquez. “This morning I go out, I feel good. For this afternoon we changed some things and the rhythm was good. We tried the hard tyre and then we came back to the soft, but the other people put a new soft at the end and I kept he tyre from the morning with a race distance and still the lap time was 31.4. So I’m happy because the pace was good.

“I don’t know how is my level with the new tyres, but at the moment looks like again Lorenzo is the strongest one on Friday. Our race pace is very similar. The thing is that I don’t know how is my pace with the new tyre, but I think will be not faster than Jorge. But with the used tyre looks like I feel good like more-or-less in Malaysia. We are using the same style of bike for try to use more the second part of the race and looks like with the used tyre the pace is good.”

The Honda riders have been struggling with overheating on the front tyre today and for Marquez this led to a change in his planned schedule with three and four lap stints favoured instead of slightly longer runs.

“The front tyre is overheating. I think that because nobody expected the temperature to be this warm here at Valencia and looks like the front tyre is on the soft side. But we are working on the set-up of the bike to try to stress less the front tyre.”

When asked if he had been given any instructions for Honda for this weekend Marquez said simply, “Nakamoto-san has only asked to us that we try to win the race.”