Bautista hoping to solve front-end issues after lonely ride from 12th to 6th

The sun finally shone on the third day of the GP of Aragon today, with home favourite Alvaro Bautista able to overcome his difficulties in practice to seal sixth place in the race. The result was an improvement of six places on his grid position and it keeps him well in the hunt for fifth in the championship.

Unlike front runners Pedrosa and Lorenzo, Bautista did not take part in an Aragon test session earlier this month and with so little dry track time over the past two days he was unable to perfect his set-up for today’s race. Starting from the fourth row of the grid he made up places during the early laps before settling into a rather lonely sixth place. He might have done better, but the lack of set-up held him back as he didn’t feel comfortable pushing any harder.

Alvaro Bautista (6th) “Considering how practice went sixth place is a positive result. Obviously I’m not particularly happy with it, because I think we can do much better and be fighting for results like Misano, but that was always going to be difficult today. I tried my best to chase the second group, but it wasn’t possible and I was having to take too many risks, so in the end I decided to play it safe and bring the bike home for as many points as possible. It is difficult to race like that and we need to find a solution to our front-end issues if I am going to be able to push this bike week in and week out. We have salvaged a difficult situation today, but we need to keep working and knowing this team as I do, I’m sure that’s what they’ll do.”

Fausto Gresini “After the way practice went we managed to make up some good positions today, but it is unfortunate that we haven’t been as competitive as Misano and I’m disappointed with that, because we want to be consistently fighting at the front. A few problems today despite the obvious competitiveness of the RC213V meant it wasn’t possible, but we know it’s a fantastic bike, so we need to get more out of it between now and the end of the season.

Source: Gresini Racing / Honda Pro Racing