Strong start for Luis Salom at Aragon

The third Spanish round of the Moto3 World Championship began in satisfactory fashion for Red Bull KTM Ajo. World Championship leader Luis Salom —third—, was amongst the fastest riders in the two Free Practice sessions on Friday.

Red Bull KTM Ajo made a strong start at MotorLand Aragon. Salom clocked the second fastest lap in the first session of the day, with a 2:00.930 time. He was one of just two riders to breach the 2:01 barrier. Salom was trying out updates to his KTM chassis, whilst his teammates –Arthur Sissis in eighth with a 2:01.753 lap and Zulfahmi Khairuddin eleventh with a 2:02.253– gathered important data as they worked with a suspension adjustment.

The fruits of the hard work were shown in the afternoon session, in which the Red Bull KTM Ajo riders lowered their times. Salom led the way in the early stages, but left his best time until the antepenultimate lap of the day. His 2:00.229 time put him third overall. Zulfahmi Khairuddin put in a 2:00.924 lap and Arthur Sissis –suffering from a cold– contributed a 2:01.655.

Luis Salom will attempt to repeat his front row qualifying spot from last year in tomorrow’s grid-deciding session, whilst Zulfahmi Khairuddin and Arthur Sissis will look to improve upon the third and sixth row, respectively.

Luis Salom
“My foot is much better. Even though I cannot walk too much still, I’m happy because my condition has improved and by the end of the year I hope to be almost fully recovered. As for today’s practice sessions, we did very well. The feeling was very good, both in the morning and afternoon, but at the end of the second session I came up against some traffic.
We will continue working tomorrow as we did today and try to finish polishing the details of the setup. We are pleased with the performance of the bike at this track and that’s very important.”