Rizla Suzuki’s first practice session of the 2011 MotoGP season did not go to plan in Qatar tonight.
Álvaro Bautista (P16, 1’58.528, 15 laps) returned to the pit-box shortly after taking to the Losail track, suffering with arm-pump caused by a combination of a new brake system and brand new gloves – both required after his huge 250km/h crash in Monday’s test. The situation did not improve during the remainder of the short 45-minute session and Bautista’s best time was over 1.5 seconds behind his best test lap.
Bautista will have two sessions tomorrow to rectify the situation and get back on course as he continues his preparations for Sunday’s race. Today’s quickest time was set by Casey Stoner on a Honda.
Rizla Suzuki will be in race action on Sunday 20th March, when the MotoGP season kicks off with the first round of the year under the impressive floodlights at Qatar.
Álvaro Bautista:
“The words I want to say cannot be used in a press release! It was an impossible practice because we wanted to try a different setting, but I had a problem with the front brake feeling right from the beginning and after that I also had some pain in my right arm – which was probably because I had new gloves on and they were too tight – so I wasn’t able to ride like I can. At the end I used the other bike, but the problem hadn’t gone away. I think we need to forget today and concentrate on tomorrow because we have two more practices to improve things.”
Paul Denning – Team Manager:
“Unfortunately we wasted 45 minutes of good track time tonight and got absolutely nothing done. We had an issue that didn’t come up all through the test, which meant Álvaro wasn’t able to ride the bike properly. We will have to find our rhythm quickly in FP2 tomorrow and pretend that our Grand Prix weekend starts on a Friday as normal!”
Commercialbank Grand Prix of Qatar Free Practice One Classification:
1. Casey Stoner (Honda) 1’55.752: 2. Dani Pedrosa (Honda) +0.610: 3. Hector Barbera (Ducati) +0.669: 4. Marco Simoncelli (Honda) +0.689: 5. Valentino Rossi (Ducati) +0.727: 16. ÁLVARO BAUTISTA (RIZLA SUZUKI MOTOGP) +2.776:
