Source: Supplied.

Repsol Honda’s reigning MotoGP World Champion Marc Marquez showed his hand on Wednesday at Sepang, as Malaysia’s first official test of the 2017 pre-season this week concluded.

Marquez was second on Wednesday’s third and final day of testing with a 1m59.506s, placing him third on combined times following a frantic three days of mixed conditions. That put him just 0.138s outside of pace-setter Maverick Viñales.

“I’m much happier with my position today, even if the rhythm is really more important,” Marquez explained after ending the opening two days at the back-end of the top 10. “We did a lot of laps, aiming to do as much work as possible, and indeed we did a good job – we completed much of our work schedule, though not everything.

“We need to make further improvements in some areas where I’m not yet totally comfortable, but even so, I’m happy that we got better and better over the three days, which is the most important thing. Today we again worked a lot on the electronics and also on the bike set-up.

“In the last hour I did a mini-long run of 11 laps, sacrificing the time-attack a bit, but for us it was more important to work on the pace. I’m generally very happy with how the three days went.”

It was a positive test altogether for the factory Repsol Honda team, with triple premier class title-winner Marquez second and teammate Dani Pedrosa moving to fourth on day three.