Team Estrella Galicia 0,0 Marc VDS rider Alex Marquez was in fast form to finish day one at the Sachsenring second overall with teammate Joan Mir in 11th.

Warm and humid conditions welcomed riders for a highly competitive  opening day of practice for the German GP at the 3.6km Sachsenring.

With a superb display Alex Marquez came within just 25 hundredths of a second of setting the fastest time across the two sessions. Marquez was P6 in FP1 and despite concentrating on race set-up the Spaniard set his fastest lap of 1’24.775 in FP2.

After a slow start to FP1 Mir came back strongly in FP2 and was not disappointed to finish 11th overall given that he was just 0.25s off the fastest time.

Joan Mir was 19th in FP1 but improved by almost one second in the afternoon with some crucial set-up changes to his Kalex machine.

Tomorrow’s FP3 session at 10:55am and will be important to fine tune race set-up before qualifying at 3:05pm.

Alex Marquez: 2nd, 1’24.775

“It was good fun today at a track where normally I struggle a little. But I started the day with a good feeling and it continued like this with some small set-up changes in FP2. I did two long runs to check the tyres for the race and we have a clear choice for Sunday. Now we just need to fine tune things for qualifying and the race.”

Joan Mir: 11th, 1’25.004

“I’m happy despite my position because I had a really bad feeling with the bike in FP1, it was really difficult.but we changed many things for FP2 and it was much better. On my fast lap in FP2 I lost two tenths because of traffic but I am still really close to the front guys even though I am P11 and I am confident we can be faster tomorrow.”