BUSY MONDAY FOR STEFAN BRADL IN JEREZ
Last weekend’s Gran Premio de Espana wasn’t concluded for Stefan Bradl by seeing the chequered flag Sunday afternoon. Just one day later the German rider was able to took full benefit of good conditions throughout a one day test at the Circuito de Jerez.
After a tough weekend for Bradl and his crew of the team Athinà Forward Racing it was a perfect occasion to find solutions for the issues, which occurred the days before. Particularly it was lack of rear grip and electronic issues, which hampered Bradl to set faster lap times during round four of this year’s championship. Thanks to regained confidence and an improved feeling with the Yamaha Forward bike, Bradl concluded the test with the twelfth fastest lap time. In doing so he was also the fastest Open Class rider on track on Monday.
#6 Stefan Bradl (Athinà Forward Racing, Yamaha Forward) – 12th, 1´39.887 (52 laps):
“I feel better because I took antibiotic since last Thursday, but I’m not at 100 percent yet. Anyway, I’m happy to continue our work on track today. It was a tough job last weekend, also this test, but it was important to go out on track. First our focus was on electronically side and we’ve gained some valuable insights, which will bring improvements soon. But in detail we’ll see in Le Mans, how all these findings of this test will work. It is as important to go there with a good base and not starting from scratch or elsewhere again. Furthermore we also worked on rear grip issues for which we tried several things such as the balance of the bike and different length of the swing arm. In doing so we gathered the one and the other positive aspect which of course we’ll use in the future again. You know the tarmac at Jerez offers less grip so it’s normal that spinning appears and therefore the tyre temperature is more hot, even though we found also in this regard valuable results. Fortunate it wasn’t as hot today like the days before but now I feel tired and I’ll relax the next days in order to go 100 percent fit to Le Mans.”
Off. MotoGP™ Test Jerez:
1 Jorge LORENZO / SPA / Movistar Yamaha MotoGP / Yamaha / 1´38.508
2 Valentino ROSSI / ITA / Movistar Yahama MotoGP / Yamaha / 1´38.550
3 Cal CRUTCHLOW / GBR / CWM LCR Honda / Honda / 1´38.814
12 Stefan BRADL / GER / Athinà Forward Racing / Yamaha Forward / 1´39.887