Honda leads in the wet with Marc Márquez and Pol Espargaró

The World Championship teams and drivers were waiting for Europe to arrive to start drawing more realistic conclusions after four rather strange first Grands Prix. Although, for now, they will have to wait a little longer because on the first day on the Old Continent, the first of the Portuguese Grand Prix, there were very complicated weather conditions.

Rain, which went from dripping in the first MotoGP free practice to a heavy downpour that Moto2 suffered in the morning, wind, which increased in intensity throughout the day, and cold, the factor that tends to worsen the tires . The combination of all this left a total of 41 crashes, six in MotoGP, eleven in Moto2 and 24 in Moto3, a category from which the only injured came out, Adrián Fernández, who will be out for the rest of the weekend with two broken fingers. in the left hand.

In this displacement, the best time went to the Indonesian Mario Aji, with Carlos Tatay fourth as the best Spaniard (only 98 thousandths), while in Moto2 the German Marcel Schrotter was the fastest, with Augusto Fernández sixth, on a day in which Pedro Acosta suffered his eighth fall of the season. And in MotoGP the dominance, twice, went to Repsol Honda. In the morning, by Marc Márquez, whose record also earned him the chance to end Friday at the top of the standings.

“It’s in the water and it’s only Friday, but it’s much better to be on top than not being tenth or fifteenth, far from the top,” acknowledged the Spanish champion. «If it were dry it would give more of a rush but being in the water you understand that it is important, you understand that you are doing well, but with your feet on the ground and keep working because you know that when the training sessions are dry the hype will move again so that put everything in its place again. And that is where the Quartararo, Bastianini, Bagnaia and all those who have been fast in these first races will come out.

The leader Enea Bastianini finished sixteenth, Alex Rins, second overall, twenty-first, and the aforementioned Fabio Quartararo and Pecco Bagnaia twenty and ninth, respectively. “In wet conditions, this Honda is more or less as fast as the old one, but safer, and the truth is that it has improved a lot; the rear, the confidence in it is much better and this has helped me, which can help to drive in water for the future”, added Márquez and before the official training sessions are held this Saturday, with the forecast that he can to continue raining, although less than this Friday, and with the teams working with the forecast that the race could be dry on Sunday, which would make them arrive with very little information for those conditions.

“It is evident that it is essential to start adding points and climbing positions, because the first in the championship lead us many points”, reflected, for his part, Pol Espargaró, the best in the afternoon, with a record that left him at 41 thousandths of your teammate. The man from Granollers, after finishing third in the opening round in Qatar, has had different problems in the following three tests (a tire change for Indonesia, a crash when he was running fourth in Argentina, and a health problem in Austin) that They have moved him a little away from his expectations at the start of a very important course because the contracts for the next two seasons are going to be defined.

Fight for the World Cup

«This bike has to be fighting for the World Championship and not only me, I think the four Hondas have to fight at the front. At the moment, unfortunately, I am the first Honda in eleventh place. We have not achieved the results that we should, we have to be open and sincere with our work and our obligations, and we have to start having better results. But it can’t be an obsession, it has to be something we do out of professionalism, but not obsess over the results, because then come the mistakes due to haste that I don’t want to make,” Espargaró stressed.

In any case, the Honda left a good feeling in the wet while waiting for the dry conditions to begin to show where each one is in this MotoGP in which ten different riders have already climbed on the podium, with noteworthy absences such as Márquez himself, Bagnaia or the 2020 world champion, Joan Mir.