Improvements to be found for Jorge Martin & Juanfran Guevara at Valencia

The final round of the 2015 season, the GP de la Comunidad Valenciana, got underway today in superb conditions at the Ricardo Tormo circuit in Valencia.

With the grandstands already half full even for free practice the Moto3 riders were keen to put on a good show, with series leader Danny Kent topping the morning session before Miguel Oliveira and Jorge Navarro dominated for much of the afternoon, only for Efren Vázquez to snatch the fastest time at the end of the second session.

However, with half of the riders unable to improve their pace from the morning to the afternoon, Kent’s early benchmark was enough to leave him top of the combined timesheets overnight.

MAPFRE Team Mahindra’s home round has started with all three riders still some way off where they would like to be despite their hard work today. Juanfran Guevara (25th) and Jorge Martín (26th) had their own problems to contend with today, Juanfran suffering an engine failure and Jorge testing a host of solutions that didn’t have the desired effect.

However, all three MAPFRE Team Mahindra riders have plenty of information to work with as they aim to improve tomorrow and despite their current positions on the timesheets the trio are all within a second of the fastest lap time of the day.

25th Juanfran Guevara 1.40.794 (24 laps):
“In general the pace this morning in Moto3 was pretty fast and we were close to the top. We made some changes for the second session, including a different rear shock, but I knew from my first run this afternoon that I didn’t like it. The positive side is that we have some good information to use tomorrow. The engine started to slow down this afternoon and in the end it developed a problem that forced us to finish early. Tomorrow we will put in a new engine and hopefully it’s a more straightforward day than today.”

26th Jorge Martín 1.40.886 (30 laps):
“Today wasn’t too productive, we had a problem with the front forks this morning and I didn’t feel comfortable on the bike. We tried something new at the start of the second session but we had some problems with the ignition that thankfully we were able to solve. In the end I set a pretty positive lap time but we are a long way back and we have a lot of work to do tomorrow to improve the performance of the bike in the tight corners. It has been a tough first day but we know how to improve.”

Source: Aspar