Ángel Nieto Team MotoGP - Qatar Test 1

2018-03-01 12:06
The Spanish MotoGP team start with Álvaro Bautista in 12+1 position, just 0.8 seconds off the top with team-mate Karel Abraham in 18th
The MotoGP World Championship 2018 is edging ever closer, with the season set to start on the 18th March at the Losail International Circuit in Qatar, venue for the final preseason test – a three-day session that began today. Maverick Viñales, winner of the race here in 2017, was the quickest on track by a margin of just 0.051 seconds over Andrea Dovizioso and 0.054 over Andrea Iannone. With the top sixteen riders all lapping within the same second, the new season looks enticingly close.

The Ángel Nieto Team kicked off the final test of the 2018 preseason with Álvaro Bautista in the 12+1 position, just 0.8 seconds off the best lap of the day. Bautista was one of the last riders out onto a track that for the first few hours of the session was in very different condition to what the riders can expect in the Grand Prix. The Spaniard made gradual progress throughout, working mainly on improving rear grip. Meanwhile his team-mate Karel Abraham finished eighteenth fastest, with a best time of 1'56.268 after 54 laps. The Czech rider also got slowly to grips with his Ducati and was happy with his feeling at the end of the first day. With two days still remaining of the test, Abraham and his technical staff are planning to try some different set-up options and complete a race simulation.


12+1 Álvaro Bautista 1:55.848 (53 laps): “Our objective today was just to see how the bike worked here, because in Thailand we found some good and some bad. Here we struggled to get going, the rear was not gripping at all in corner entry or exit. We tried some changes on the bike but that made no difference, so we changed the tyre and it seems this was the issue. We continued to work on improving the rear grip and made gradual progress. I am happy because our pace on used tyres is good and I used them to set my best time. We have to keep working on rear grip and the electronics, but in terms of the lap time everybody is very close.”

18th Karel Abraham 1:56.268 (54 laps): “Today was not a bad day but definitely not one of our best so far. We had a lot of things to work on and especially in the beginning I didn't feel great on the bike. But we made some improvements and we could see the lap time get better. There are plenty of things for us to work on tomorrow to improve it again but I think we are in good shape at the moment. We might do a long run tomorrow, this is one of the things we need to focus on, and after the debrief tonight we will make a plan for some different set-up options that we'd like to try.”

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