Marquez tips Nakagami to be top MotoGP rookie

Moto2 graduate Nakagami, who like LCR Honda teammate Cal Crutchlow is contracted directly to HRC, was 0.675s off the pace of Dani Pedrosa's benchmark time at the end of the Buriram MotoGP test.

It means the 26-year-old, who is the first full-time Japanese MotoGP rider since Hiroshi Aoyama in 2014, ended both Sepang and Buriram tests as the top rookie.

In Thailand, Nakagami followed Marquez for one fast lap, an experience the Japanese says he could learn a lot from.

When Marquez was asked about who he expects to be the top rookie, the Spaniard said: "I believe it will be Nakagami. He is really fast."

Crutchlow was also "pleased" with Nakagami's progress, adding: "He's riding really good, we're really pleased with the way he's working. He's shown a lot of people up."

LCR team boss Lucio Cecchinello was "surprised" by Nakagami's performance in Thailand, and expects him to be competitive during the 2018 season.

Nakagami was also praised for his technical understanding of the bike.

"We let him without the pressure to understand the bike and to see also how the bike behaves with different set-ups, different electronics," said Cecchinello.

"We are quite surprised because he is really sensitive he can feel the small differences. I believe that he will be someone quite competitive in the future."

Nakagami not like other Japanese riders

Cecchinello previously said Nakagami had proven less shy and more communicative than other Japanese riders that the team had worked with previously, following his LCR debut in Valencia testing.

"We worked with Japanese riders before, normally Japanese riders are not very much skilled at communication," he explained.

"They need to communicate in a different language and culturally they are a little bit more reserved, more conservative, shy, while he [Nakagami] is really giving nice and straight information to our engineers.

"I liked the fact he is calm and the fact he is interacting with our technicians already in a very professional and constructive way.

"He is not a typical rider who is very nervous or is pushing very hard from the first lap then eventually gets really tired straight after.

"He is really doing his approach, I believe, in the right way because he is taking his time, slowly improves his pace and what I liked is the way how he communicates with our crew chief."

Additional reporting by Scherazade Mulia Saraswati