PULL&BEAR ASPAR Team MotoGP - 01 Qatar GP - FP1

2017-03-24 20:18
The MotoGP World Championship season officially got underway on Thursday night in Qatar. A change in timetable for the round at the Losail International Circuit means that the action begins a day early, with a single Free Practice session for the MotoGP class. The fastest tme of the opening night was set by Maverick Viñales, with a 1:54.316, almost 6 tenths quicker than his closest rival. Marc Márquez and Dani Pedrosa were the only other riders able to place within the same second as their fellow Spaniard, whilst behind them a large group were separated by just a single second.

The Pull&Bear Aspar riders had experienced positive preseason tests, and continued this in the opening practice session of 2017. Álvaro Bautista stopped the clock at 1:56.128, completing 19 laps of the Qatari track. He and his crew dedicated the session to trying out various adjustments that had been left over from preseason, and also experimented with the tyres that had given them the worst feeling at Losail last week. Bautista hopes to continue his improvement tomorrow evening. Karel Abraham placed fifteenth, but was just 8 tenths off fourth place. He suffered a light crash at Turn 2, just minutes before the end of the session. He escaped unharmed, but the Czech rider was unable to improve his top time of 1:56.399.



14th Álvaro Bautista 1:56.128 (19 laps): “The track was very different today compared with the conditions in the test. We used tyres which I hadn’t liked so much, because we had to try out some things that we hadn’t been able to in testing. We used today for that. I felt more or less comfortable, but I hope to continue gaining confidence tomorrow and get back the feeling that I had in the tests. It was a good first night’s work, and I hope that for the rest of the GP we can be stronger.”

15th Karel Abraham 1:56.399 (14 laps): “The track was still a little bit dirty from sand, and it was difficult to clean it. I felt very good on the bike on the last stint. I was trying to set a fast lap time, which immediately worked out for me on the first attempt. On the second time, I was pushing but not excessively so -and on the second corner I crashed. We're looking at why that happened, because I wasn't braking as hard as in the test -nor was there as much lean angle. I saw Miller crash in front of me, so we'll see what really happened because I'm a little bit confused. I think we can be happy with fifteenth, but maybe if we hadn't crashed we could have made the Top 10. When I set my best lap time I really felt that I wasn't pushing 100%. I was sure that I could get up to a 1:56.2 on the next lap, but unfortunately I had the crash.”

Source: AsparTeam

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