Team Estrella Galicia 0,0 Marc VDS riders and Franco Morbidelli and Tom Lüthi spent a productive day of free practice in preparation for Sunday’s Spanish Grand Prix.

The MotoGP rookies evaluated various set-up and tyre options aboard their Honda RC213V machines on the newly resurfaced 4.423km Jerez layout.

The data collected will form the basis of their assault on the 25-lap race, which is round four of the MotoGP World Championship.

Both riders set their fastest times in this afternoon’s second free practice session in sunny but slightly windy conditions.

Morbidelli improved by 0.7s over his FP1 time while Lüthi went 0.3s faster compared to his best time in the morning session. It has been valuable track time for Lüthi who missed last November’s test session at Jerez because of injury.

Franco Morbidelli: 21st- 1’39.951
“I am happy with the work we did today especially with the lap time improvement, this is positive for the race. I think we have a very good potential to be even stronger tomorrow. There was a little more wind in the afternoon session but we are working calmly towards refining the options for the race.”

Tom Lüthi: 23rd – 1’40.241
“This track feels quite small on a MotoGP bike, the corners come very fast and there is no time to rest. But it is a nice track and the new surface, which I am riding for the first time, is smooth and grippy. There are also many hard acceleration corners here, which cause a lot of wheelies. As the temperature went up in the afternoon the track felt different so this was useful data as we work for our race set-up.”

Diego Gubellini: Franco Morbidelli Crew Chief
“The track conditions were much warmer today compared to the test here in November so we got a lot of useful data. In the afternoon session we found some solutions to improve rear-end stability on acceleration which was an issue in the morning session. We still need to work on improving turning and grip and that will be our focus tomorrow but we are not so far from an ideal set-up.”