Alvaro Bautista puts in best time of the weekend in Qatar qualifying

The Saturday practice, the final free practice session and then the timed qualifiers to determine the starting grid order, concluded the final approach to the first GP of the season for Aprilia Racing Team Gresini. This round marks the Aprilia RS-GP bikes’ racing début.

Just like the rest of the weekend in the Qatar desert, the team used this last day of practice as a further step in the development of the fledgling project. In fact, in the final 30 minute free practice session the work on various setups and different electronics strategies took a step forward.

During the first qualifying session valid for deciding the starting grid order, Bautista put his best time of the weekend on the sheets with 1’56,187. With this time Alvaro earned a spot on the seventh row for the race tomorrow.

ALVARO BAUTISTA
“My feeling on the bike hasn’t changed a lot but we have improved on the electronics front. During the qualifiers I was only able to get two fast laps in, but in any case we were able to improve our times. When I tried to take a bit more of a risk on the flying lap the bike responded well at the front going into turns and I was able to lap fairly fast. We still don’t have much information in this area, so we would like to be able to gather more in order to test and achieve that good feeling consistently. For everything else we’ll keep working on the electronics and the way the frame performs in turns, particularly going in, as well as trying to find better grip. The race will be difficult tomorrow without and doubt, but we will be looking at it as a test. Our goal is to get to the end with good sensations, trying to maintain as consistent a pace as possible. After a complicated day like yesterday today went better and I want to thank the team for that.”