Marc Marquez tops day 1 of private MotoGP testing at COTA

from TWOWHEELSBLOG

Dani Pedrosa, Marc Marquez, Valentino Rossi, Jorge Lorenzo and Stefan Bradl got their first taste of the demanding Circuit of the Americas that will be hosting the second round of the 2013 MotoGP championship on April 21st.

The first day of private testing was spent learning the difficult circuit and its layout and adjusting to the lack of grip and the rising temperatures and a fastidious crosswind and not posting fast lap times, but MotoGP rookie Marc Marquez got the hang of the circuit before the rest of the riders as he spent almost all day on top of the provisional timesheets, except when Pedrosa took over for an hour, then Marquez grabbed back the top and lowering his lap times to finish the day in 2.04.619, leaving his team mate Dani Pedrosa almost five tenths adrift.

Stefan Bradl spent most of the afternoon behind the Honda factory riders and ahead of Yamaha’s Jorge Lorenzo and Valentino Rossi until reigning World champion decided to assert his authority over a satellite rider - albet riding a spec RC213V -and ousted the LCR rider out of third and pushed him into fourth.

Despite putting in more laps than anyone, doing 68, Valentino Rossi ended up fifth fastest and more than a second adrift from his team mate and even worse almost 1.9 seconds from the elbow scraping rookie and struggling to find a set-up and seems to have some wheeling issues.

So far Richard Stanboli’s warning regarding the COTA circuit that they are going to be a lot of crashes for those who won’t be testing proved true only for his rider Blake Young and his CRT Kawasaki caught fire and the morning session had to be red flagged.

Most of the riders were impressed by the circuit and its facilities, even if some consider the track to be more adapt to car racing than GP racing, but are happy that they’ve gotten a chance to test.

2013 MotoGP private test Austin day 1 results:

1 MARQUEZ M.Repsol Honda Team 2’04.619
2 PEDROSA D.Repsol Honda Team 2’05.047
3 LORENZO J.Yamaha Factory Racing Team 2’05.291
4 BRADL S.LCR Honda MotoGP 2’06.053
5 ROSSI V.Yamaha Factory Racing Team 2’06.507