Alvaro Bautista back in top ten at Sepang qualifying

Team GO&FUN Honda Gresini’s Alvaro Bautista will lead the fourth row of the grid in tomorrow’s Malaysian Grand Prix: the Spaniard set the tenth fastest time in this afternoon’s Qualifying session at Sepang, first clocking the fastest time in Q1 with 2’01”818, then closing in tenth position the Q2 with a time of 2’02”294.

Today’s result marks a slight improvement compared to Bautista’s last few qualifying performances; Alvaro, anyway, struggled again with rear grip aboard his Honda RC213V machine.

The rain could come tomorrow to help him in the race: yesterday in fact, in full wet conditions, the Spaniard was feeling pretty good.

ALVARO BAUTISTA (10th – 2’02″294)
“I’m tenth on the grid, but two riders didn’t take part at the Q2 because they were not fit to ride, so for us the position is the same as the last few races; especially my feeling with the bike has not changed here. We are struggling a lot with rear grip; it’s like the rear tyre is not working properly. Once again, we are facing a difficult weekend: we have always the same problems, regardless of the weather conditions. We always try many things, but we never find the solution. Yesterday in full wet conditions my feeling was not so bad, so if tomorrow it’s going to rain, it could be good for us, but with mixed conditions we will be again in trouble”.

Source: Gresini Racing