MOTOGP – FIRST DAY AT ARAGON
BAUTISTA AND BRADL CONTINUE DEVELOPMENT ON THE APRILIA RS-GP IN PRACTICE
Circuito de Aragon (Spain), 25 September 2015 – After the tests conducted at Misano following the last GP race, the Aprilia Racing Team Gresini riders took advantage of the first day of free practice at Motorland Aragon to do some comparative testing on the materials available to them. This has become the usual routine during this year which is dedicated to “in race” development of the Aprilia MotoGP project.
In the morning session Bradl finished in a positive 12th place with Bautista just behind him in 14th place. In FP2 the track conditions allowed for significantly lower times. Both riders improved with Bautista (15th in 1’49,576) ahead of Bradl (19th in 1’49,980).
ROMANO ALBESIANO (Aprilia Racing Manager)
“Alvaro has a good feeling so we’ll be trying to achieve the best possible setup with him tomorrow, working mainly on race strategy. With Bradl, on the other hand, we’re having a bit of trouble with grip, so we’ll probably make some more radical changes to improve in this area tomorrow. In the meantime we’re moving ahead with the material comparisons we started during the Misano tests, especially the chassis and in particular the swingarm.”
FAUSTO GRESINI (Team Manager)
“On this first day Alvaro found his groove straight away, even putting in some good lap times. There is still a lot of work to do, but beyond the final placing we are already closer to our adversaries compared to where we have been on other tracks. Stefan, on the other hand, ran into a bit more difficulty and we’re working to help him get more grip at maximum lean angle so that he can have a bike that’s easier to ride and better traction.”
ALVARO BAUTISTA
“Basically today we continued the work we had begun in our last tests as far as trying out different types of swingarms and bike geometries as well. It was positive because it cleared up some things for me about this track which is quite particular because of grip conditions and the way this asphalt deteriorates tyres. So tomorrow we’ll have to work above all on race pace because consistent performance will count more than anything here.”
STEFAN BRADL
“The session this morning was positive but we knew that the afternoon session would be more significant, with higher temperatures and better conditions. We lapped more with the hard rear tyre, although later we realised that the soft one seems to work better. In general I don’t have very good grip at the moment. We need more traction on the rear. We tried some different setup solutions and various swingarm lengths but we still haven’t managed to take a truly significant step forward. Anyway, we have the sessions tomorrow to put together all these indications and make some improvements.”
