Bautista e Melandri are hard at work with the entire team on a track that demands rethinking the setups on the RS-GP bikes
Le Mans (France), 15 May 2015 – The first day of free practice on the historic French circuit in preparation for the GP on Sunday had the Aprilia Racing Team Gresini technicians and riders looking for new setups on the RS-GP bikes ridden by Melandri and Bautista.
In fact, the grip conditions on the French track proved to be hard on the setups that the Italian team had been working on in the latest outings and which had brought consistent progress in the first four rounds of the season.
So Friday work was done in various directions and tomorrow will be the same for the two sessions prior to the qualifiers. The team is looking for different solutions so they can get back the good feelings they had at the end of the Jerez round and to be able to count on a setting for the RS-GP bikes tomorrow (when the starting order will be decided) that will let Bautista and Melandri push hard to put the best possible times on the sheets.
Today at the end of the two practice sessions Alvaro finished with the 22nd time in 1’35.137, while Marco put the 25th time on the sheets in 1’36.056.
ROMANO ALBESIANO (Aprilia Racing Manager)
“After Jerez we thought we had a fairly strong performance in hand, but here we found decidedly different conditions which have now forced us to try and make up ground in terms of grip. We need to do a lot of work on the setups, changing the chassis parameters in order to look after the tyres better on a track that is characterised by hard deceleration and restarts”.
FAUSTO GRESINI (Team Manager)
“It was a day complicated by conditions, especially by low temperatures, which are taking more of a toll than we expected. But we know what our actual potential is and what we need to do is to work to get back to improving straight away, gritting our teeth so we’ll be in the best possible form tomorrow”.
ALVARO BAUTISTA
“We started from a very similar to the one we used at Jerez, but evidently the low temperatures complicated things. In the morning we were already having problems with grip, so in the afternoon we tried a different setup solution but without any positive results. In short, it was not our best day, but sometimes that’s the way it goes: we’ll keep working to find a solution to the problems that this track poses for us”.
MARCO MELANDRI
“At Le Mans I am still having the same problems that I’ve had since the beginning of the season. Today the bike was moving around a lot and it was hard to get my lap times down, but tomorrow we’ll keep working hard while waiting for some radical changes that will meet my needs to be able to really push”.
