ENCOURAGING QUALIFYING AT THE BRICKYARD
Indianapolis, 8 August – Stefan Bradl qualified for P17 on the grid in his debut as Aprilia factory rider though, this performance came surprisingly for him.
Bradl displayed a steep learning curve over the course of both practice days. With every single run he feels better with the team’s Aprilia RS-GP and furthermore he was able to improve his lap times by one second session by session. With his personal best marker of 1´33.822, Bradl will start from the sixth row, just ahead of his more experience team mate Alvaro Bautista. Despite reduced grip and less than perfect track conditions for the brand-new Italian MotoGP prototype, as well for Bradl’s physical conditions due to his still injured right wrist, he underlined grit and determination.
#6 Stefan BRADL (Aprilia Racing Team Gresini, Aprilia), Grid position 17th – 1´33.822 (5/7):
“I’m absolutely surprised to have already reached such a strong level on my first outing with the new team and bike. It’s true that I didn’t take much to get more familiarized to it further, but in any case I hope that we’ll capable of making another steps in terms of setup tomorrow. Today we did a lot of work both on the geometries and on the electronics and the most important thing is that I can feel the changes well. That means that we know which direction to go in order to improve. In any case tomorrow’s race won’t be no walk in the park: I pushed hard during practices and in qualifying today and I could feel that my right wrist is still not at 100 percent. I’ll give it a rest this night as well do to everything possible in order to be physically fit tomorrow. Anyway, it will be tough of course because also the tyres will wear, the bike’s performance will change and I still need to learn how to ride it in these conditions, particularly with worn tyres. But in any case we have done a great job thus far and I hope we’ll be able to deliver a good race tomorrow.”
Classification Qualifying (QP1/QP2):
1 Marc MARQUEZ / SPA / Repsol Honda Team / Honda / 1´31.884
2 Dani PEDROSA / SPA / Repsol Honda Team / Honda / 1´32.055 +0.171
3 Jorge LORENZO / SPA / Movistar Yamaha MotoGP / Yamaha / 1´32.186 +0.302
17 Stefan BRADL / GER / Aprilia Racing Team Gresini / Aprilia / 1´33.822 +1.938 (Q1)