Alvaro Bautista takes nineteenth grid spot in rain-hit Silverstone qualifying

Qualifying complicated by the rain ended the second day of the Silverstone weekend, the day that decides the starting grid for the race tomorrow. After an FP3 session that showed progress compared with yesterday, Alvaro Bautista (also victim of a fall) and teammate Stefan Bradl had to adjust the settings on their Aprilia RS-GP machines to deal with the foul weather.
Alvaro Bautista showed good progress in FP4, finishing with the 14th best time.

The Aprilia Racing Team Gresini therefore tackled Q1 in wet track conditions, a rather complex situation given how little time there was to find the specific setup. Bautista, with a best lap of 2’20.299, finished qualifying in nineteenth place.

ALVARO BAUTISTA
“We worked primarily on the electronics in order to make the bike easier to handle and we were able to improve a bit, especially in terms of pace. Unfortunately, in FP3 I had a crash on turn 12, where a lot of riders fell, and that kept us from trying a few changes. With the rain in FP4, I tried to gain confidence in the wet, also in view of qualifying. The weather seemed to be improving slightly, so we decided to start Q1 with used tyres and change them later, but it actually started raining harder and I struggled a bit to get the tyre up to temperature in the three flying laps”.

Source: Aprilia