Jorge Navarro improves his performance in Austrian qualifying

Jorge Navarro will line up in the middle of the fourth row of the grid for tomorrow’s 25-lap Austrian GP Moto2 World Championship race on boad his Kalex #9 machine. The Spanish rider of team Federal Oil Gresini Moto2 logged a 1’30.116 to claim the eleventh starting position for the middleweight class encounter.

Despite a difficult start, the 21-year-old was able to make some important progress – which helped him improve by two seconds his best-lap time from FP1 – and to show a great pace ahead of the race, which will get underway at 12:20 local time (GMT +2).

Crucial will be tomorrow morning’s warm-up, scheduled at 9:10, in which Navarro and the team will try and improve the feeling with the front-end of the bike as well as come to a final decision about which tyres to use for the race. The medium compound, at the moment, appears to be the preferable choice over the softer one.

11th – Jorge Navarro – #9:

“We did improve compared to yesterday and that’s a fact. We have made a step forward but I still don’t feel fully comfortable on the bike, especially with the front-end. I had a couple of moments today, one in FP3 and the other in qualifying – where I got really close to falling off the bike. In the last outing, we tried new settings at the front and it seems like things have improved a little, so tomorrow during warm up we’ll make a final decision on what to do. We are still unsure about the tyres to use: I’m not sure we’ll be able to use the softer option as it might wear out after few laps, but we will leave this decision to tomorrow as well.”