Dani Pedrosa didn’t even turn a wheel during today’s third and final test day of pre-season testing at Jerez.
The Repsol Honda rider decided that his RC213V is already perfect (which is pretty scary) and preferred to leave the Spanish circuit to have more time to recover from neck pain that first appeared during Austin test earlier this month.
Before leaving the circuit Pedrosa said, “This morning was sunny but by the time we got to the track the clouds had started to arrive.
I was discussing the programme for the day with my team and it started to rain.
We decided that we had nothing new to test in these conditions – even if it started to dry up this afternoon, and we are happy with the machine.
On top of that, I felt the pain in my neck again yesterday and would prefer to rest it in time for Qatar.
We’ve done a lot of testing this winter and now we are ready to go racing, I can’t wait to start the season.
” Marc Marquez being a rookie – and a very high profile one at that – decided to stick it out and continue to accumulate as much track time as possible and he was one of the first prototype riders that decided for a few laps in damp conditions early this afternoon that put him in second.
He then waiting for the track to dry out more before using slick tires and then posted the fifth fastest time of the day in 1:40.
130 bettering his previous day’s lap time by six tenths of second which put him sixth overall in the combined test times.
“It was dry and sunny this morning then at around 10.
30 it began to rain quite heavily.
We put in a some laps to understand a few things in these conditions as we had some problems in the wet on the first day, so this was helpful as we found some answers.
Everybody was waiting for the track to dry out and although it was a little cold, the last hour was good.
It was useful to test some things and I feel much better than yesterday, we made some improvements, especially in our consistency and with electronics.
Now I will try to relax and prepare myself for Qatar, this has been a positive winter testing – much better than I expected,” said Marquez.
