For the opening day of the Czech GP at Brno, rain was the prescribed conditions for the riders to return to after a four week break from the sport.
Despite the steady rain, mild temperatures prevailed and riders were quick to take to the wet track.
The FP1 session was run on a full-wet track with the Repsol Honda of Marc Marquez ending in P2.
โI'm happy enough with today because we were quite strong in the wet this morning,โ the Spaniard said. โI felt comfortable on the bike and that's important in case we have rain on Sunday. Then in the afternoon, in the dry, the grip was a bit less compared to the test we did here in July, but the general feeling was quite similar."
"We tried something different on the chassis' setup, but tomorrow we'll return to the settings we found in July, when we were able to set a good pace. We used a new fairing that I felt good enough with, so we'll keep it for the whole weekend and will continue working hard to prepare for Sunday.โ
Weather conditions improved over the course of the day, allowing the riders to switch to slicks and a dry setup for FP2, although the track was still a bit patchy in spots at the beginning of that session. Teammate Dani Pedrosa closed the day in seventh place while Marc was down in 10th.
โToday was good because we were able to do a good test in wet conditions,' Dani said. โ We actually didn't expect the rain, or at least not so much rain, but all in all it was good because after having tested here in the dry during the summer break, we now had the chance to verify in different conditions the small changes we had made on the bike.โ
โThis afternoon we basically had half an hour in the dry, but that was also positive in general. We used a new fairing that we had tested in July; we're still learning about it and are setting up the bike for it little by little, in order to see what level it may bring us to. We didn't fit a soft tyre at the end and just continued on with the same one. Now we'll wait for the track to be dry tomorrow and to get some rubber on it.โ
Neither of the two riders opted to fit a new tyre at the end of the session.