Alvaro Bautista struggles with grip to qualify 12th at Motegi

Team GO & FUN Honda Gresini riders will start from the fourth and fifth row of the grid in the Grand Prix of Japan which will take place tomorrow at the Twin Ring Motegi circuit: during this afternoon’s qualifying session Alvaro Bautista set the 12th fastest time with 1’45”677, while his teammate Scott Redding will line-up in 15th place with a time of 1’46”499.

As happened in the last few races, Bautista has been slowed down by a lack of rear grip: during the third and final free practice session this morning, the Spaniard couldn’t hit direct access to Q2, in which, however, subsequently took part thanks to the second fastest time achieved in Q1, 1’45”797.

In the decisive qualifying session Alvaro then shaved off another tenth to his limit, but without climbing positions.

ALVARO BAUTISTA (12th – 1’45″677)
“This is not an easy weekend for us, for sure: we are having the same problems we had in the last races. I need more rear grip both on entry and exit of the corners. I’m struggling to stop the bike and also under acceleration, where the rear tyre is moving a lot. We did some small steps forward and we are always trying to improve, but this morning, during FP3, when I was trying to get directly into Q2, I used a wrong tyre which was sliding a lot, therefore I was not able to improve my lap times. In Qualifying I did my best, but we know that we are in a better shape regarding the race pace than the speed on a flying lap. Tomorrow our target is to fight for the 6th or 7th position, like we did at Aragon”.

Source: Gresini Racing