MOTOGP – FIRST DAY AT SILVERSTONE
BAUTISTA AND BRADL ARE HARD AT WORK ON NEW MATERIALS FOR THEIR APRILIA RS-GP MACHINES
Silverstone (UK), 28 August 2015 – On the first day of practice at Silverstone in preparation for the MotoGP race on Sunday, Alvaro Bautista and Stefan Bradl divided up the work testing the new materials on their Aprilia RS-GP machines.
Bautista used the new frame that had already been used at Brno and which is now available on both bikes, whereas Bradl, in his third round of the season with Aprilia, took a new swingarm onto the track. With this Aprilia Racing Team Gresini moves forward in their MotoGP project with the goal of confirming the good result from the last race in Brno where, for the first time this season, both riders finished the race in the points. An electrical problem at the beginning of FP2 forced Bautista to change bikes, hindering work and leaving him a bit behind in the final times. Stefan finished the first day of the English weekend with the 20th best time (2’04,416) ahead of Alvaro, 21st with 2’04,885.
ROMANO ALBESIANO (Aprilia Racing Manager)
“We struggled a bit. Alvaro had a problem with the bike he prefers and on the second one, with different adjustments, he didn’t feel comfortable. Unfortunately we couldn’t turn back during the session. This certainly penalised him. With Stefan, on the other hand, we continued with our tests, focusing on the new swingarm, trying to figure out the actual advantages of it. Now we are hard at work trying to take an important step forward to improve for tomorrow.”
FAUSTO GRESINI (Team Manager)
“Today Alvaro struggled to stop the bike, which is sliding a lot, so tomorrow we’ll try to make some changes in the hopes of improving balance. Bradl tried a different swingarm and tomorrow he’ll continue testing to get to know it better. In any case Stefan put some good times on the sheets both in the morning and afternoon sessions, so we hope to continue along these lines tomorrow.”
ALVARO BAUTISTA
“Unfortunately changing the bike kept me from working on what we had planned for the afternoon. It’s a shame because I could have done better. The second bike had a different setting and I didn’t feel comfortable on it, especially in the braking sections. The morning session went better. I rode carefully at the beginning but then I found my pace. Now I have two bikes with the frame that was introduced at Brno and that should allow me, even tomorrow, to compare the various settings more quickly.”
STEFAN BRADL
“In both sessions we tried a new swingarm that seems to provide some advantages. But in order to take full advantage of it first we’ll need to solve the problems we had today coming out of turns. We need to make the bike a bit less twitchy. Tomorrow I’d like to continue using the new swingarm and if we can solve these problems I think we’ll be able to make some more good improvements.”
