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Marquez strong in Valencia test "for the first time"

Marc Marquez said this year's edition of the Valencia MotoGP post-season test was "the first time" he felt strong with his new Honda machinery from the get-go.

Bike of Marc Marquez, Repsol Honda Team

Bike of Marc Marquez, Repsol Honda Team

Gold and Goose / Motorsport Images

Marc Marquez, Repsol Honda Team
Marc Marquez, Repsol Honda Team
Marc Marquez, Repsol Honda Team
Marc Marquez, Repsol Honda Team
Marc Marquez, Repsol Honda Team
Marc Marquez, Repsol Honda Team
Marc Marquez, Repsol Honda Team
Cal Crutchlow, Team LCR Honda
Cal Crutchlow, Team LCR Honda
Cal Crutchlow, Team LCR Honda

Marquez, along with teammate Dani Pedrosa and HRC-contracted satellite rider Cal Crutchlow, all tested new engines and chassis brought by Honda.

The reigning champion said that while he and Honda usually struggle during the first test for the new season including last year when he complained about electronics, this time he had a positive experience with the new bike.

"Normally, every year I was struggling here," said Marquez. "We were talking one year ago here that the electronics are not there we need to work on the electronics.

"I'm happy because it is the first time that with such a new engine I feel inside with the parameters. But we need to reconfirm in February."

"First of all with protobikes we have more problems but this is normal when you put a completely new engine and new chassis on the bike.

"Then on the current bike we tried different things, also were working very good and better than what we had until now.

"I don't want to say [we] completely confirmed, in Malaysia we need to retry all these kind of things."

Marquez said the engine in particular proved to be a step forward.

"Always when we get a new engine we try to get more power, and we gained especially on the bottom [low-rev], we gain a little bit more power also in the top [high-rev]," he explained.

"The prototype engine, we can gain there but we need to work on the chassis area.

"The chassis that we have today were many many different parts and now we need to understand which parts were better, which parts were worse.

"Now we need to understand well, [make] the correct decision for the Malaysia test because it will be the next time that I will ride with the bike."

"Positives outweigh the negatives" - Crutchlow

Crutchlow, who will ride a factory Honda bike next year, was also positive following the two-day test, saying the new bike had more advantages than disadvantages.

The Briton praised Honda for improving the bike in areas the riders asked to.

"The new HRC prototype bike seems to be better in some areas and also worse in some areas but I think the positives outweigh the negatives," said Crutchlow.

"In the areas we asked to improve it seems we have improved. Sure, we may have created problems in other areas but we have to be happy with that we've got.

"They've looked all areas, everything we've asked for, definitely, they hundred percent looked at all the areas but you can't just change everything.

"What they had is not bad it just won the world championship."

Crutchlow will test the new Honda one more time this year at Jerez next week, while Marquez and Pedrosa will only ride again in the next official test at Sepang in 2018.

Additional reporting by German Garcia Casanova and Gerald Dimbreck

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