ALVARO BAUTISTA IS TENTH AT SILVERSTONE
BRADL CRASHES WHILE BATTLING FOR A FINISH IN THE POINTS
Silverstone (UK), 30 August 2015 – Alvaro Bautista rode his Aprilia RS-GP to a tenth place finish in the rain at the English GP and matched his best performance of the season after the identical placement at Barcelona. Hard luck for Stefan Bradl who, in his third race with the Aprilia Racing Team Gresini, took a slide in the thirteenth lap while he was in a solid position to battle for a points finish after showing that he could be fast on a wet track in warm up, staying in the respectable zone of the standings for a long time.
For the Italian team this concludes a weekend of great improvement with a nice result, also characterized by good performance on Saturday during qualifying when Bradl, with the 14th best time, earned the best placement on the starting grid so far this season. These are positive signs of improvement in view of the next round at Misano.
ROMANO ALBESIANO (Aprilia Racing Manager)
“Alvaro rode a great and very intelligent race with excellent consistency, bringing home another tenth place finish which is a great result and battling with the centre group which, at the moment, is our best objective. It was a shame that Bradl crashed, although he was riding our bike on a wet track for the first time. In the morning he rode an extraordinary warm up session in these conditions. Overall we’re leaving here after a decidedly positive weekend because of the progress we made over these three days, both in terms of pure performance, speaking of Bradl’s qualifying session, and in terms of race pace as far as what Bautista demonstrated on Saturday. We are improving and I hope that we’ll be able to confirm this progress already in the next round at Misano.”
FAUSTO GRESINI (Team Manager)
“It was a good race, one of the best of the season for us so far. It also proved to be important since we verified our good level of competitiveness in the wet, as this is the first time for us. We collected some information which will be very useful for us. Bautista finished in the top ten and actually not far behind the riders ahead of him. It’s too bad about Bradl’s crash because Stefan was also riding a great race and was close to Alvaro. That is just further proof of the good work we did this weekend. MotoGP is not an easy championship, but we are handling it with determination and taking steps forward. For this I would like to thank the Aprilia mechanics and the entire team for the great job they are doing.”
ALVARO BAUTISTA
“First of all I’d like to compliment whoever stopped the start. That was an excellent decision that prevented any problems. I’m disappointed not to have been able to race on a dry track as yesterday I had found a good feeling with the bike and I could have collected a lot of information. At the beginning I didn’t have a great feeling in the wet but I saw straight away that my times were quite good. It was difficult to gauge tyre performance, especially the rear, so I tried to set my pace and ride smoothly. That way I was also able to come back a bit, battling with various rivals, especially in the second part of the race that seemed to last a long time. In the end I even came close to ninth place, but this result is fine. I’d like to thank the entire team for the great job they did this weekend.”
STEFAN BRADL
“At the beginning of the race the tyres were very cold and I wasn’t able to maintain a good pace. Then finally after 4 or 5 laps I was able to start pushing harder. I got close to Alvaro and followed him for a few laps and then at a certain point going into turn 16 I suddenly lost grip at the front while braking and crashed. I’m very disappointed because we could have brought home a really good result, but throughout the weekend we didn’t really have a lot of time to work on the setup for this bike in these conditions, so I’m satisfied with the work done up to the crash. This time we were unlucky but we’re anxious to make up for it at Misano.”
