Marquez: New swing-arm 'slightly better'
Injured reigning MotoGP champion Marc Marquez was back on track during Monday's official post-race test at Jerez.
After splitting the Movistar Yamaha riders for an impressive second place on Sunday, Marquez initially said he would not be testing to avoid the risk of further harm to his healing finger.
However Honda later stated the young Spaniard would be doing a'a few laps' to evaluate a new swing-arm. That turned out to be 31 laps, four more than a full race distance, with Marquez concluding testing just before 2:30pm with a best time of 1m 38.968s.
That effectively matched his best lap in the race and was good enough for fifth on the final Monday timesheets, half-a-second behind race winner and test leader Jorge Lorenzo.
"We tested the swing-arm to try to get more edge grip and acceleration, but also the floating feeling on the entry. It was slightly better, but not a big improvement," said Marquez, who picked up a fever to add to the physical "stress" on his finger and arm from yesterday's race.
"But we already knew it wasn't a big change, it was just for Honda to understand which way we need to take. Now they have the information and for that reason I did these 30 laps and now they will work in these two weeks until Le Mans."
The #93 reiterated: "We need to improve the rear grip a little bit and especially the floating feeling on the entry of the corner. The big slides look good for the show and it's fun to ride the bike like this but we are losing time.
"If we improve these two points we will have a really good package."
Marquez trimmed four points off Valentino Rossi's title lead on Sunday, meaning he heads to the next round at Le Mans 26-points behind the Italian.
"Of course it's always important to take points from the leader but for me it was not very, very important to finish in front of Valentino [on Sunday]. I mean it's important for the championship, but not for my mentality. Because I already knew after the first three races I was on the level."
