Second Day Of Practice In Qatar: The Aprilia Rs-Gp Machines Continue To Improve Their Times, Session After Session
On the Losail track, in preparation for the Qatar GP that will kick off the MotoGP World Championship on Sunday, the second day of practice was held with two sessions today, FP2 and FP3.
Aprilia has the new RS-GP bikes on the grid for their maiden race weekend and they have continued to improve their times session after session. In the three sessions held yesterday and today, the Aprilia V4 machines demonstrated consistent progress on the clock both with Bautista (1’57.129 – 1’57.012 – 1’56.749), and with Bradl (1’57.989 – 1’57.541 – 1’57.069). This is good feedback for a project that is taking its first steps with margins for improvement that are still just waiting to be discovered.
The Aprilia Racing Team Gresini riders put in a total of 77 laps today (34 for Alvaro and 33 for Stefan), confirming the increasing reliability of the RS-GP, a first step on which to set up development in terms of performance as well.
ALVARO BAUTISTA
“We’re working nonstop trying to find the best sensations in the saddle. The bike is so new that we discover something new on every lap. The results today are that, in terms of race pace I’m rather satisfied. The pace is good with a used tyre. When we tried to improve times with a new tyre we were lacking on the fast lap. Basically I had the same feeling that I had with the tyre that had done 22 laps. In any case, we are achieving our goal, which is to get in as many laps as possible to streamline development”.
STEFAN BRADL
“In each session we are improving by almost half a second. I am feeling better and better on the RS-GP. Unfortunately the feeling yesterday was not as I had expected, so we got off to a bit of a slow start, but now we are making up ground. This makes me optimistic. We still have a long way to go, but if we can keep growing at this pace I’m sure we’ll be able to get there quickly. Another positive factor is that we are able to solve every small problem that comes up quickly. Of course, we lose a few precious moments during the sessions but we are getting closer and closer to the ideal base set up”.
