A TOUGHER DAY FOR GUINTOLI WHO IN ANY CASE HAS CLEAR IDEAS ON HOW TO PROCEED.
Portimão, 4 July 2014 – Marco Melandri came out of the gates shining at Portimão, taking the top spot in the first morning session and pleased with the work accomplished in the afternoon. Sylvain Guintoli had a few difficulties, starting off well (second in FP1) but unable to find his groove in the afternoon. In any case, both riders have clear ideas on how to set up the two sessions tomorrow.
Melandri, improving steadily in the last two rounds where he took two wins and then two podiums, stopped the clock with the best time in the first session, immediately feeling comfortable on the ups and downs of the Portuguese track. In the afternoon the Italian rider focused on a series of tests both in terms of tyres and settings for his number 33 RSV4, gathering useful information for tomorrow’s sessions and Superpole. For the races Marco is expecting a tight group of competitive riders, a situation that promises two spectacular shows.
Marco Melandri: “Overall this was a good day for us. In the afternoon the conditions were much different than in the morning with strong winds and very hot asphalt. Because of that we focused on testing tyres because with the new solutions available to us the choice is not necessarily a given. As far as our times go I was quite pleased with the performance in the first practice session so in the afternoon I decided to work more on race pace. I am seeing a lot of competitive riders and here at Portimão race times usually change quite a bit, so being well prepared is essential. Superpole is not my strong point, but tomorrow I’ll have to try to take advantage of it as best as possible. Starting from the front row could definitely help in the hung for a good result”.
Sylvain Guintoli, after an excellent performance in the morning, also set to work solving some grip problems due to the different track conditions in FP2. The changes made didn’t provide the expected results, so tomorrow Sylvain and his team will continue working on the base settings to try and find the best configuration.
Sylvain Guintoli: “Today was a tough day. It seems like the track lost a lot of grip compared to last year. We did well this morning and then in the afternoon we tested some different geometries to try and improve but the results were not what we had hoped for. So tomorrow we’ll go back to our base setting and start over from there, going in a different direction and trying to improve on our times. I like the track and I’m confident that we’ll be able to solve the problems we had today and ride two good races”.
FRIDAY – COMBINED RESULTS
1. Melandri (Aprilia) 1’43.880
2. Sykes (Kawasaki) 1’43.927
3. Rea (Honda) 1’43.939
4. Laverty (Suzuki) 1’44.147
5. Davies (Ducati) 1’44.273
6. Guintoli (Aprilia) 1’44.304
7. Lowes (Suzuki) 1’44.374
8. Haslam (Honda) 1’44.511
9. Baz (Suzuki) 1’44.629
10. Giugliano (Ducati) 1’44.862
