Marquez, Pedrosa debut new Honda fairing

The Repsol Honda duo of Marc Marquez and Dani Pedrosa each debuted a new (Yamaha style) aerodynamic fairing on their Repsol Hondas during Friday practice at Le Mans.

Marquez narrowly missed out on top spot at the end of FP2 to Ducati’s Andrea Dovizioso with Pedrosa finishing the day eighth fastest after initially struggling with hip pain in a lasting injury from his dramatic Jerez crash.

The reigning world champion and current points leader was especially eager to introduce his one allowed 2018 fairing upgrade at Le Mans, where it helped acceleration and cornering at the stop-go a circuit.

“It is different and improves some areas, especially when it creates less wheelie and on corner speed,” Marquez said. “We’ve also changed the fairing and we’ve tried to improve a little bit in Mugello’s straight [during a recent test] but here you cannot feel the difference. We used the joker [one fairing upgrade] because we believe that at the racetrack it can help.

“We have more ideas as always but this one was already precise so I think with these two different fairings the one I am using and the one we introduced here we can be competitive for all the season."

Pedrosa agreed with his team-mate on the new spec aiding wheelie reduction but feels less certain about using the new parts for the Le Mans race, while it is thought Marquez is leaning towards using the new fairing for the remainder of the French round.

“I tried the new aerodynamics in my last run, and at this track in particular, that seems to offer a bit of help in controlling the wheelies,” Pedrosa said. “The bike seems more balanced in general, but we want to work on it more to understand things better.”

Marquez also confirmed he will try Honda’s carbon swingarm again during the final practice sessions at the Bugatti circuit to gather a greater understanding and comparison to its current aluminium version.

The Spaniard insisted the carbon version is a work in progress and will also test it at Circuit de Catalunya which hosts the Catalan round next month. The main benefit of the carbon-spec is to provide the same stiffness levels but with less weight.

“Tomorrow I will try it but we are still working on it,” Marquez said. “On Monday at Jerez we saw that the difference was not so big but tomorrow I will try it.”