Still work to do for Faubel at Italian GP

Scott Redding finished today’s opening free practice session at Mugello 19th fastest, with his Marc VDS teammate, Hector Faubel, seven places further back in 26th position.

Although not happy to be so far down the timesheet, both Marc VDS riders declared themselves happy with the progress made during free practice and confident that they will improve their lap times significantly ahead of tomorrow’s all-important qualifying session.

Faubel posted the 15th fastest time quarter of the way through the opening practice session, but opted to evaluate set-up changes rather than to continue chasing for fast laps. Unfortunately for the 26-year-old Spaniard, the changes didn’t lead to the improvements expected and it was too late in the session to change back. Faubel will revert back to his original set-up tomorrow and has his sights set firmly on a top 15 position during the afternoon’s qualifying session.

Hector Faubel #55 – 26th – 1’58.192
“The start of the session was good and my lap times were pretty close to the guys at the top of the timesheet. But we made some changes to the set-up that just didn’t work and it took us a few runs to figure this out, by which time we’d run out of time and couldn’t switch back. Tomorrow we will change back to the original set-up, which felt good, and I’m confident we will be able to climb our way back up the timesheet before qualifying.”

Trevor Morris: Hector Faubel’s Crew Chief
“Hector was pretty quick from the start of the session today. We’ve been thinking about making some changes to the set-up for some time, changes that we thought would give us some improvements in a number of areas, so we decided to bite the bullet and try them this afternoon. Unfortunately, the changes didn’t give us the improvements we expected and Hector’s lap times suffered as a result. We will go back to the first set-up tomorrow; it definitely wasn’t time wasted today, as we now have a much better idea of what does and doesn’t work for Hector, which will stand us in good stead in the future.”