23rd place on the Austin grid for Alvaro Bautista

In the final free practice sessions (FP3 and FP4) and in the qualifying session that determines the starting grid order, Aprilia Racing Team Gresini continued working on development of the RS-GP bikes.

After finishing in 19th place in FP3, Bautista had to forego the bike he had used for that time due to a technical problem. He wasn’t able to find a good feeling and he had to settle for a time of 2’05,595, taking 23rd place which places him on the eighth row of the starting grid tomorrow.

ALVARO BAUTISTA
“We worked a lot on the electronics to have better power management, trying a lot of solutions that will also be useful for the future. But for the qualifiers I was forced to take out the other bike with a different setup and I wasn’t able to take advantage of all the work we had done up to that point. It’s a shame because I’m sure I would have been able to lap faster. For tomorrow the unknown is the weather. If we have a wet race it will be important to set a good pace straight away. In any conditions, and considering how things went in Qatar, the important thing will be to finish the race.”

Source: Aprilia