Alvaro Bautista takes an excellent eighth at Barcelona
In the best performance so far by the fledgling Aprilia RS-GP, Alvaro Bautista authoritatively takes a nice eighth place finish in the Catalunya GP that was raced with rider Luis Salom in everyone’s thoughts.
Penalised by his spot on the starting grid, Bautista rode an intelligent race, making up positions from the start. But he gave the best of himself in the last third of the race when he consistently lapped at times that were higher only to those of the riders battling for the top spots, overtaking Redding, Miller and, in the final two laps, Barbera and Petrucci.
In the end he finished with an eighth place that represents one of the best performances by the Aprilia RS-GP in its début on this track.
The growth of the RS-GP project is marked by both Aprilia Racing Team Gresini riders placing in the points: Bradl, twelfth across the finish line, also rode a comeback race where he moved up six positions with respect to his initial spot at the start.
ALVARO BAUTISTA
“I am truly satisfied with this result that came thanks to the hard work of the entire team. During practice I had a few difficulties. The bike was unstable and we had to work hard to find a setup that would conserve the tyres. In the warm-up session I decided to increase the restriction, so in the first laps of the race I could see that the others had an advantage coming out of the turns. I wasn’t unnerved by that. I stayed calm, trusting in the quality of the work we had done. In fact, in terms of pace, the choices we made proved to be the right ones. I made a lot of nice passes and, especially in the second half of the race, I was really able to be fast. It’s a shame about the starting spot, which in no way reflects our level. Unfortunately, after the crash in FP4 on Saturday I just wasn’t able to find the same feeling in qualifying. Tomorrow we will test on this track and try to continue improving, with our thoughts already on Assen, where we will find very different characteristics”.
Source: Aprilia