Alvaro Bautista 18th on Indianapolis grid

On a demanding weekend like few others for the Aprilia Racing Team Gresini, the best news arrived just in time during the decisive Q1 session. In fact, both Alvaro Bautista and new teammate Stefan Bradl significantly improved their times in the session that decides the starting grid for tomorrow’s race.

Alvaro Bautista qualified with 18th best time and on the sixth row of the grid. Despite the reduced grip and the less than congenial track conditions for the Italian bike, both riders showed grit and determination.

Tomorrow, where Alvaro will be hard at work during the morning warmup and the race, promises to be rather interesting. There is also a chance of rain in the forecast which could reshuffle the entire deck.

ALVARO BAUTISTA
“Today we did various tests trying to improve the setup, to help the RS-GP turn better and to find traction. It wasn’t a huge step forward, but we did manage to make some improvements. In particular the hard front tyre still doesn’t give me the same feeling as the soft one, but it performs better in terms of consistency for the race, so I think that will be our choice for tomorrow. In qualifying I was able to take good advantage of the first tyre, improving my time by half a second, whereas with the second one while I was pushing hard I lost control and even risked crashing. Fortunately nothing happened besides me not being able to make any further improvement on my times. Tomorrow we are expecting a hard race on a track which is difficult for us, also taking the weather into consideration which could change everything. In any case we need to continue working and gathering data.”

Source: Aprilia