BRITISH GP - Rain hinders qualifying session for Ángel Nieto Team

2018-08-25 12:08
Karel Abraham and Álvaro Bautista will start from the seventh row of the grid at the British Grand Prix



Ducati will occupy the top two spots on the grid at the British GP, with Jorge Lorenzo in pole position for the second time with the Italian factory, and Andrea Dovizioso alongside him on the front row. Johann Zarco joins them, with current series leader Marc Márquez in fifth. Valentino Rossi will take off twelfth, just behind his teammate Maverick Viñales.

Rain made qualifying session tricky for the Ángel Nieto Team, and their rider pairing will start from the seventh row of the grid. Karel Abraham was twentieth and Álvaro Bautista twenty-first in the afternoon session. The Czech rider, who has struggled more than expected from a lack of winglets on his Ducati, ran a wet tyre in qualifying but believes that another compound would have sped him up by as much as two seconds. Bautista was one step away from entering Q2 directly, and went from being able to fight for a position among the top twelve, to qualifying twenty-first. The Ángel Nieto Team rider was tenth in the final minutes of FP3, but Danilo Petrucci snatched the position from him and a crash prevented the Spaniard from returning to the top 10. In qualifying -the first time he had ridden in the rain on the new asphalt at Silverstone- Bautista could not find a good feeling.



20th Karel Abraham 2:15.721: "It’s hard for us. I expected to have fewer problems without the winglets, but that wasn’t the case. Yesterday we took a big step forward, but not as big as we needed. Qualifying was our first time on the track in the wet, and the circuit had two different zones. We used medium and soft wet tyres and I think it was a mistake, because although we were strong, the bike was moving around a lot and we could have gone a couple of seconds faster with the right tyres. It is a pity we didn’t realise this before, because the session is very short and we didn’t have time to react. If it rains tomorrow it could be a problem, because there are puddles in some areas and it might be dangerous. Hopefully we compete in dry conditions or with little rain, but it is something that we will have to see about tomorrow."

21st Álvaro Bautista 2:16.106: "In the morning the track was a bit worse than yesterday, but I improved my times and I think I could have entered Q2 directly if it had not been for the crash. The track was very delicate. In the qualifying session it was the first time we had ridden here in the wet and I was not comfortable with the bike, especially with the rear end, as it lacked contact. When you have no feeling, you can’t do much in the rain. The condition of the asphalt was horrible, especially in the wet part. When it started to rain it was very bad, as I went through the place where everyone was crashing very slowly and the bike would not stop; I don’t know if there was something on the asphalt, or if because of the bumps the water remained stagnant. Going at about 180 km/h I could not brake and I went straight on, and was lucky not to crash. If it rains tomorrow like the forecast suggests, it will be impossible to ride."

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