Bautista still looking to gain more confidence with front end of RC213V

Michele Pirro continues to surprise on board the Honda CBR 1000R powered FTR CRT machine despite it having on a few hundred kilometres on the clock. The Italian rookie shaved a second and a half off his best time from yesterday in tonight’s second and third free practice sessions and could have gone even faster but for a small technical setback with the bike. Alvaro Bautista struggled for front feel on the RC213V tonight and has work to do ahead of tomorrow night’s qualifying session.

Alvaro Bautista (10th 1’ 56” 771) “Today wasn’t a good day for us – we tried to improve the feeling with the bike from yesterday but didn’t manage it. My feeling with the front just doesn’t allow me to push although when we changed to the soft tyre it improved so maybe we should have done that from the start and we’d be in better shape right now. Anyway, it’s important to try these things because we need to make our tyre choice for the race. After 11 laps we had more grip than we’d had with the hard so I think the soft has good potential for the race. Now we need to look at the data and try to improve the front.”

Fausto Gresini “It wasn’t an easy night for Alvaro. He struggled more than yesterday and we need to know why. There is one particular section of track that he’s having difficulty with so we need to have a close look at the data and try to get more out of the bike. I should say that apart from the top guys everybody else is very close so it looks like it could be a tight race from fourth place back.

Source: Gresini Racing