MotoGP arrives in Thailand for the first time

2018-10-02 08:37
Ángel Nieto Team make first trip to South East Asia with Álvaro Bautista ready for top ten return as Karel Abraham targets repeat of Aragón



The MotoGP World Championship continues to break new boundaries even after seventy years of competition and this weekend will see the series arrive at the Buriram in Thailand for the first time ever for the fifteenth round of the 2018 season. The title chase is almost over with Marc Márquez holding a 72-point lead with just 125 now still available. That gap to Andrea Dovizioso in second place is bigger than the cushion the Italian holds over Andrea Iannone in ninth place. Now the riders face a fresh challenge at a circuit they have never raced at, although they did complete a test here in preseason, when Dani Pedrosa, Johann Zarco and Marc Márquez set the pace and were the only riders to break the 1'30 barrier.

The Ángel Nieto Team travel to Thailand with Álvaro Bautista ready to return to the top ten, where he was bound for until a crash last time out at Aragón, whilst Karel Abraham is keen to pick up with another points-scoring performance. The team was amongst those to test in February in Buriram and is looking forward to the opportunity to measure their progress over the season. Bautista finished that test with the seventeenth fastest time, which is some way off his current performance level, and he is keen to confirm that progress this weekend. His teammate Abraham is one of the few riders to have prior race experience in Thailand, having already competed at Buriram when contesting the World Superbike Championship in 2016, although he doesn't see that this will put him at an advantage over the other riders this weekend.



Álvaro Bautista: “I go to Thailand feeling motivated to start this month of races outside Europe with a strong result. It is a new circuit for everybody although we did test there in February. At that time we weren't in the best form but luckily the situation has changed since then. With the feeling that I have in this second half of the season and the work we have done, I am looking forward to comparing our performance from the start of the season to now. We will head into the weekend with the same working plan as usual, which would have been good enough for a good result at Aragón if not for the crash. Let's see if we can finish the job off this weekend with a good result in the race.”

Karel Abraham: “We scored a point at Aragón and we go to Thailand in good spirits. It will be a difficult race because we will have similar temperatures to the last race but with much higher humidity, and it is also the rainy season. I have been looking forward to the flyaway races because they are some of my favourite circuits. This will be the first race at Buriram for the MotoGP paddock but I did race there in World Superbikes a couple of years ago, although I don't think that will make much difference because we had a preseason test there in February.”

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