Ángel Nieto Team in top ten contention at Assen

2018-06-29 13:16
Spanish MotoGP team have both Álvaro Bautista and Karel Abraham inside top fifteen on opening day of free practice

Maverick Viñales was smiling again today after leading the opening day of free practice at the Dutch TT. The Spanish rider set the quickest lap time on a day that saw four different manufacturers represented in the top five positions. Behind him, Andrea Iannone and Danilo Petrucci completed the top three as Marc Márquez ended the day eighth, six tenths off the time set by Viñales, just behind the back-to-back winner from Italy and Barcelona, Jorge Lorenzo.

The Ángel Nieto Team were pushing for top ten positions on the opening day of the Dutch TT as both Álvaro Bautista and Karel Abraham made one of their strongest starts to a weekend this season. The Spaniard finished both Friday sessions with a good feeling although his position perhaps doesn’t reflect it. Some traffic on his final flying lap prevented him from finding some crucial tenths that would have propelled him into the top 10. Karel Abraham is also feeling good with his Ducati GP16, having improved the bike on each exit before setting a 1’34.522 that leaves him fifteenth overnight.

14th Álvaro Bautista 1:34.484 (35 laps): “It has been a positive day, the position is not one of the best but we were always close. In the end I was unable to put one good lap together because I ran into some traffic and couldn’t take much time off my best lap. I am happy because we did some tyre tests this afternoon so that we know what compound to run in the high temperatures that we are encountering. We more or less have a clear idea about the set-up for tomorrow so we will push hard in FP3 to try go directly to Q2, then set a good grid position and make the most of my pace in the race.”

15th Karel Abraham 1:34.522 (38 laps): “I think we had a very good day today. We had a couple of issues to sort out on both ends of the bike so we worked hard and improved a little bit with every exit. Our strategy was to use a fresh tyre, a different tyre, on the last exit and again it was a little bit better. I was in a good group in front of me and made a pretty good lap time. It wasn’t just one lap though, we made quite a few in the mid to high 1’34s and we are very close to Alvaro so that’s good.”

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