Strong start for Alvaro Bautista at Assen

It was a positive first day of the Dutch TT for Team San Carlo Honda Gresini, with Alvaro Bautista continuing his good recent form in free practice at Assen and Michele Pirro able to close the gap to the top CRT riders Espargarò and De Puniet.

The Spaniard and the Italian were fourth and fourteenth fastest overall, with qualifying due to take place tomorrow and the race on Saturday.

Alvaro Bautista (4th 1’35”008) “It has been a positive first day, which was important for me because this is my first time here with this bike and I don’t have great memories of this track in MotoGP. It was like riding a completely new circuit for me this morning and we also had a setting in the bike that I didn’t like so much, so in the afternoon we went back a step with the setting and tried the harder tyre. We had to work on the bike a little bit because it was moving around in corner exit and we also made some improvements to the handling. We have work to do but I am happy with the start we made today.”

Source: Gresini Racing Press Release