“Today was not our best day. We could not ride the bike well because we had a problem on corner entry, so we have not managed to achieve better laps. Hopefully things will be better tomorrow and we can return to setting good lap times.”
Dani Pedrosa
“The conditions and grip levels weren’t as bad as they looked, as I felt good on the bike, but unfortunately I was braking too late, too much. We have to improve on that because the bike is still a bit nervous in hard braking areas. I feel that the style of the circuit fits the Yamaha well. That’s a little bit of an advantage for them, but the Honda is not so bad either; we have good top speed and the Honda is competitive everywhere.”
Stefan Bradl
“We need to make some changes to the bike for tomorrow because I felt we had too much weight transfer on braking and acceleration, but I’ve got to be happy to finish in second and ending up in between Jorge and Valentino. As the track conditions improve some of the rest will get faster and it is still going to be very tough to be on the podium. I am looking forward to the race and being so competitive from the start certainly gives my confidence another lift and helps me carry on the momentum gained in testing.”
Cal Crutchlow
“I am really happy - I don’t even know myself where that performance came from (on Thursday night)!. The bike worked perfectly and it allowed me to ride with ease; and the more I saw the lap times drop, the more I wanted to push. I was able to follow the factory bikes around certain parts of the track, which is something that has never happened before. Clearly the new ART is working even better than last year.”
Aleix Espargaro
“I was looking forward to the season starting but, to be honest, my feeling with the bike wasn’t what I expected in this first session. We still have a lot of work ahead of us.”
Randy de Puniet
“I’m quite happy because we started well from the beginning. The grip levels here in Qatar aren’t perfect but step-by-step I tried to find the best setup, tried to work always thinking about the race and at the moment we still need to work a lot. I know the grip will be better tomorrow and every rider will be faster. We need to keep that level and concentrate on our work, but I think we have started pretty well. If I’m being honest, I was a little bit nervous…especially at the beginning when I went out. It felt a bit strange on the bike on the first lap, but after that I just tried to ride like I did during the pre-season and everything was fine.”
Marc Marquez
