Alvaro Bautista will start from the sixth row in Qatar

In his first qualifiers with the new Aprilia RS-GP, Alvaro Bautista continued the constant process of improving his lap times. In fact, he finished with 1’56.595, which is his best time since the start of the weekend where he has been consistently improving in every session. His performance, although marred by a crash, earned him the sixth row on the starting grid for the GP that will open up the 2016 championship season.

Now the focus shifts to the races tomorrow, when Bautista and teammate Bradl will need to rely on a good race pace – taking advantage of the warm up session to achieve it – in order to improve on their performance during practice.

Alvaro Bautista
“Today we continued with our programme, making a few changes during FP4 to try and improve. We are fairly confident with our race pace. We have reached a set-up level that allows me to be rather consistent lap after lap. Especially in terms of the electronics, we have been working well over the past few days. In qualifiers we changed our strategy compared to last year because I need a few laps on the new tyres in order to be fast. So I started with used tyres and we had planned to be on the track for the entire session. It was a shame about the crash. Unfortunately, when it comes to shaving of a few tenths I still don’t have the right feeling with the bike. Physically I don’t have any problems. I’m confident about the race tomorrow. Our primary goal is still to go the full distance.”

Source – Aprilia Racing