THE ALTERED CONDITIONS OF THE ASPHALT PUT ESPARGARÓ AND REDDING IN DIFFICULTY
Demanding day at the COTA for Espargaró and Redding. The Aprilia riders, who had done two good practice sessions yesterday, found completely different grip conditions today. The lack of feeling conditioned preparation for the qualifiers, forcing both to go through the Q1 selection session.
For Aleix, the greatest difficulties were due to the balance of the RS-GP, with a troublesome chattering and poor grip. Despite using different tyres in terms of compound, the Spanish rider was unable to be incisive and will have to settle for the first spot on the seventh row of the starting grid.
The poor grip make the day difficult for Scott Redding as well. After a good start in FP3, and with the goal of doing a time attack in the later portion of the session to try for a top 10 spot that would have meant going straight through to Q2, the British rider’s plans were spoiled by the arrival of a light rain shower. Subsequently, in FP4 and in the first qualifying session, Scott was unable to find the same feeling, finishing with the twenty-second best time for a spot on the eighth row.
ALEIX ESPARGARO’“It was a very strange day. Yesterday we were fast, but today I hardly recognised my bike. We gave it our all in qualifying, but in spite of it we were not able to get close to the top ten, which is a goal that we knew was within our potential. The lack of grip and strong chattering at the front end slowed me down today. We’ll try to figure out why these problems came up so we can get back in the right direction. After all, the potential is there. Yesterday I was able to be fast and Scott was also competitive.”
SCOTT REDDING“In FP3 I felt very much at ease. I had managed to improve with the medium tyre, but just as I was ready to put on the soft tyre, confident that I would be able to do a good time, it began to rain. In FP4, after the rain, I struggled because of the lack of grip, both on the front and on the rear, and it was the same in Q1, where our performance was below our expectations. Aleix also struggled in qualifying, I think because of the same problems, so now we will need to analyse the data well in view of the race tomorrow.”
