GONZALEZ AND ARENAS EIGHTH AND NINTH, RESPECTIVELY, IN BURIRAM DAY ONE
We are in Thailand for the eighteenth round of the season. Team Gresini Moto2 is immediately among the protagonists with Manuel Gonzalez second in the morning free practice. There was a lot of work to do to adapt the bike #18 to a very different circuit compared to the previous one, also with regards to temperatures: in the afternoon, he set a personal best lap-time in 1’35.740secs, which translated into an eighth position, as he is currently among the group eligible to be seeded directly to Q2 – a position he will have to confirm tomorrow morning in Practice2.
Albert Arenas’s focus for the day was on his race pace performance: the #75 made the most of the first two session of the weekend to work on a long run with used tyres; he set then his quickest lap-time in Practice1, a 1’35.856secs, which allows his to also be provisionally in Q2 with a ninth place.
8th – MANUEL GONZALEZ #18 (1’35.740)
“It was a full Friday here at Buriram: the two sessions were quite busy, as the feeling at the beginning was not great. We’re racing on a very different track compared to the previous one so we had to work a lot to adapt. We’re wrapping up day one still not fully satisfied as we’re a bit away from where we expected to be, but we have the potential to improve for tomorrow and do a great qualifying.”
9th – ALBERT ARENAS #75 (1’35.856)
“Opening day at Buriram: as I didn’t have a good feeling at Phillip Island, we chose to start with the base set-up we knew, with the goal to put together some good laps with no modifications in order to see how we’d improve. This way we made the most of the tyres and the track improvement. Then we worked on our race pace with used tyres, and we need now to analyse where we’re at. Finally, I did my time attack and got back in the top ten, before crashing. We’re strong on the single lap performance and now we need to concentrate on our pace.”
