AUSTRALIAN GP: NO REAR GRIP ON FRIDAY
Stefan Bradl endured a difficult opening day at the Australian round due to rear grip issues.
However, changeable weather played its role on Friday which is seasonal typical for Phillip Island. During this morning’s FP1 intermittent rain drops appeared which made it difficult to adapt to the track which is no longer strange to Stefan Bradl but he rides the factory Aprilia RS-GP for the first time in Down Under. Although temperatures were ambient, which allowed him and his crew in Aprilia Racing Team Gresini to work properly on settings and tyre choice, Bradl missed rear grip though conditions improved this afternoon. Therefore, until tomorrow’s all-important qualifying practice there is a lot of work to do for the German MotoGP rider.
#6 Stefan BRADL (Aprilia Racing Team Gresini, Aprilia), FP1: 23. – 1´33.558 (7/16) / FP2: 21. – 1´31.577 (17/21):
“In any case, this weekend started somewhat as usual here at Phillip Island with changeable weather conditions. From this point of view, the session this morning was less significant. Fortunate the conditions improved by time as we found a good weather during FP2 this afternoon. However, I felt rear grip issues immediately as I was struggling with a lot of spinning out of the corners. So I wasn’t able to accelerate as I would like to. We are not using the full potential of the tyres at the moment and even we tried a different compound later during FP2 it was hard to improve my lap times. In any case we improved the feeling with the front end but for now we must analyse all data gathered today in order to make further progress tomorrow.”
Combined Practice Times FP1/FP2:
1 Marc MARQUEZ/ SPA / Repsol Honda Team / Honda / 1´29.373 (FP2)
2 Jorge LORENZO / SPA / Movistar Yamaha MotoGP / Yamaha /1´29.433 +0.050 (FP2)
3 Maverick VINALES / SPA / Team SUZUKI ECSTAR / Suzuki / 1´29.518 +0.135 (FP2)
21 Stefan BRADL / GER / Aprilia Racing Team Gresini / Aprilia / 1´31.577 + 2.194 (FP2)