MALAYSIA GP PREVIEW
Sepang (Malaysia), 20 October 2015 – The Malaysia Grand Prix, after the races in Japan and Australia, will conclude the Pacific racing tour. MotoGP will take on the Sepang circuit, characterised by long straight stretches and serious braking sections, but also by fast turns and more flowing sections. This is a variety of situations where the Aprilia RS-GP machines will be called on to confirm the progress demonstrated in the last two rounds. In Japan it was Stefan Bradl who achieved the best qualifying session of the year, just barely missing out on going through to Q2. In Australia Alvaro Bautista, his Aprilia Racing Team Gresini team mate, achieved the best race performance in terms of the time gap behind the leader. Right here on the Malaysian track, where the Italian team tackled the first tests of 2015, they will be called on to confirm these improvements.
ROMANO ALBESIANO (Aprilia Racing Manager)
“Sepang is a particularly important round for us because it brings us full circle with the tests in February. It will be interesting to compare, especially with Alvaro who was with us then, the sensations and to measure the progress made with all the development work done throughout the 2015 season where our RS-GP went from a freshly made object in need of complete development to a machine capable of consistently competing for championship points. For Stefan this will be his first time at Sepang with Aprilia, but in any case it will be a very interesting test, given the extreme characteristics of this track, where we’ll be back for winter testing as well.”
FAUSTO GRESINI (Team Manager)
“In Malaysia we’ll be finishing out a long tour outside of Europe which has provided good feedback on many aspects up to this point. On two tracks that are very different from one another, Motegi and Phillip Island, we collected more important data for development, demonstrating some good signs, especially in the qualifiers at Japan and a great performance over race distance by Alvaro in Australia. At Sepang, a track where we already have some points of reference from our tests in February, it will be interesting to see what steps forward we have taken from the beginning of the year to now.”
ALVARO BAUTISTA
“We lapped here with the RS-GP during the winter tests, so we’ll have some points of reference that mean we won’t have to start from zero setting up the bike as we have on the other tracks. Sepang is a very demanding track. There are slow turns, fast turns and very demanding braking sections, as well as the usual Malaysian heat. It will be a hard race, but I like this track a lot and I’ve always done well here, plus we are coming here with a lot of motivation after the good result at Phillip Island in terms of race performance. Malaysia is a chance to try to improve even more.”
STEFAN BRADL
“Since being astride the Aprilia RS-GP the Phillip Island was the most complicated yet. The low temperature conditions probably penalised us, making us struggle more than usual. In Malaysia we’ll be facing completely different conditions and most importantly we’ll already have some references to go by, so I’m confident that things will go better and that we’ll be able to find some good solutions to achieve good performance.”
