Fifth row start for Alvaro Bautista in Assen

The weather is still the big and unpredictable protagonist on the Dutch Assen circuit. The rain that arrived after three practice sessions held on a dry track forced the MotoGP riders to use rain tyres from FP4, where the treacherous asphalt caused a series of spectacular crashes. The Aprilia riders also fell victim to the situation, crashing during the last free practice session that precedes the qualifying, without suffering any physical consequences.

However, this meant that in the session that decided the starting grid order, both Alvaro Bautista and Stefan Bradl had to use the second RS-GP available to them. The Spanish rider stayed in the important positions for the entire session, choosing to stay on the track without stopping in the garage and finishing Q1 with the fifth best time. Because of the sanction imposed on Iannone, Alvaro will start from the fourteenth spot on the grid (and the fifth row), with seventeenth place and the sixth row for Stefan Bradl.

Alvaro Bautista
“Difficult conditions today. I wasn’t able to find the right feeling with the rain tyres. In fact, I crashed in FP4 without any warning. That’s why I tried to regain confidence little by little in the qualifiers, improving lap after lap but never managing to find an ideal pace. We need to work. We haven’t lapped much on the wet with these new tyres and for the moment we are pushing too close to the limit. When we try to push too hard we risk crashing like many riders did today.”

Source – Aprilia Racing