Alvaro Bautista 10th on Sachsenring grid

The German Grand Prix will start uphill for Alvaro Bautista and the Team GO&FUN Honda Gresini: the Spaniard qualified today in tenth position during the qualifying session at the Sachsenring circuit and therefore tomorrow he will line up his bike on the fourth row of the grid – A starting position certainly not easy on a twisty track where it’s essential to stay close with the other riders in the early laps of the race.

The major difficulties of Bautista, whose best lap has been 1’21”906, emerged with the new tyres: aboard his Honda RC213V machine, in fact, Alvaro failed to exploit the potential grip offered by the new tyres and consequently was stuck behind in tenth place.

However, the Spaniard showed a good race pace during the fourth and final free practice session, so the team is confident ahead of the scheduled 30-lap race.

ALVARO BAUTISTA (10th – 1’21″906)
“Today we worked a lot to find some more rear grip, because yesterday we have been struggling a lot with that; this morning we found something which helped me to be more comfortable and during FP4 we wanted to try another setting in order to improve further, but unfortunately we couldn’t do it due to the bad weather. In Qualifying we continue to struggle when we put the new tyre: I don’t know why, but I have exactly the same feeling when I use either the new or the used tyre. This is not a good sign, obviously. However, in FP4 with used tyres I managed to keep a good pace, so I remain confident for tomorrow’s race, but when you start from the back it’s always difficult to stay with the front group. Anyway, we have to work to improve our performance with the new tyres, because if we have a good rhythm but we can’t start from the front of the grid, it’s quite difficult to make a good result”.

Source: Gresini Racing