Ángel Nieto Team aim for fightback at last Grand Prix of the year

2018-11-19 08:44
Karel Abraham and Álvaro Bautista will start from the sixth and seventh rows of the grid at Valencia



The last race of the season will see Maverick Viñales start from pole for the first time since the Grand Prix of the Americas. The Spanish rider, who can still take third in the overall standings, has a raceday advantage over his rival, Valentino Rossi, who will start from sixteenth position. Also on the front row will be Álex Rins and Andrea Dovizioso. 2018 World Champion Marc Márquez will occupy fifth on the grid, after a crash at the start of the qualifying session.

The Ángel Nieto Team are hoping for a fightback at the last Grand Prix of the year, after Karel Abraham and Álvaro Bautista took eighteenth and nineteenth position on the grid. The Czech crashed on his final hot lap, after clipping a patch of water when running off-line. Tomorrow he aims to fight for points and end the season with a good feeling. Álvaro Bautista will target a good result in his final MotoGP World Championship race, but suffered a sensor problem with his bike that constantly activated the traction control system, losing him valuable tenths of a second. He will start from nineteenth.



18th Karel Abraham 1:32.547: "It's not our best qualifying performance, but it's not a bad starting point for tomorrow. Qualifying was our first session in almost dry conditions, although there were some patches of water that made it dangerous. It was mentally difficult. On the last lap I fell and I think that was because I touched some water. I was half a metre off the racing line, and I went down when I opened the throttle. We hope to have a good race from eighteenth. It looks like it will rain, but I hope to enjoy my last race with the team."

19th Álvaro Bautista 1:32.568: "My feeling was a little better today. We were one second off the best time this morning and we weren't able to enter Q2. The conditions in the afternoon were different, as there were only a few wet parts of the track, and if you made a mistake then you'd run onto the damp patch and fall. In qualifying, with new tyres on in order to push, we suffered a problem with a sensor that made the traction control activate all the time. I could have qualified a little further ahead, but if it rains tomorrow then the race will be long. We will try to get a good feeling and enjoy the race, as it's the last one for us."

Source: Ángel Nieto Team

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