ARGENTINA GP: FIRST TOP RESULT WITH APRILIA
The 26-year-old MotoGP rider come home in Sunday’s second race this year in an excellent seventh place.
Bradl was pleased about his first top 10 finish aboard the team all-new RS-GP prototype. Conditions were not easy to handle at any time throughout the weekend. However, conditions got worse due to changed weather with overnight rain. For this reason, the shortly scheduled practice for Sunday morning had to be cancelled as it wasn’t possible to test the option tyre which was foreseen for the race in dry conditions.
Due to this fact and for the possible case of a dry race, race distance was shortened to 20 laps as well one pit stop to swap bikes at halfway point was required. So it happened as the track dried out completely till starting time a 4pm local time. The Gran Premio de la República Argentina was declared as dry race.
For Stefan Bradl, the race started very unfavourable due to lasting clutch issues. But once he found his rhythm and the team decided for an early stop, he got more comfortable and safe in terms of assessing the difficult track conditions. Nevertheless, the remaining distance didn’t run without any problems. Bradl was more than happy to see the chequered flag with a strong result.
#6 Stefan BRADL (Aprilia Racing Team Gresini, Aprilia) – 7th (World Championship position 13th, 9 points):
“I’m absolutely happy! Today’s seventh place is a super result for me, for the entire team and for Aprilia. It was such a difficult race, which got underway with serious problems right from the start. We endured issues with the clutch throughout the weekend. For this reason, I wasn’t able to do any practice starts. So from this point of view it wasn’t a surprise that I didn’t leave the line in the right way. The early stages of the race continued in the same way actually so I was forced to slow down a bit after I made some mistakes. I was close to crash several times when the front folded. However, I was lucky to stay on the bike till the end. But I was able to finish my first stint in a decent pace. But then, our strategy with an early stop for changing the bike paid off as the timing was perfect as well it all went smoothly. After that, my pace with the second bike first was good too which was the key to secure the gap to the riders behind me. However, unfortunate I couldn’t push towards the front. For safety reasons, today we run with a higher than usual air pressure on the rear. Although, in our case it increased lap by lap for which I endured massive vibrations from the rear. So I couldn’t push anymore. However, the biggest difficulty today was to remain on the bike without doing any mistakes. As we have seen, some guys crashed out of the race. That said, I’m convinced that we did a very, very good job today. This result is enormous important, not only for me but also for my guys as well for the factory. We had many problems throughout the weekend which of you must solve in the future again but this time we managed it well to overcome that issues. Conditions were definitely quaint and we certainly benefited from some crashes. But as said, first you have to finish before you finish in this position and this of course was the main task today at all.”
MotoGP™ Gran Premio de la República Argentina – Race Classification:
1 #93 Marc MARQUEZ / SPA / Repsol Honda Team / Honda / 34´13.628
2 #46 Valentino ROSSI / ITA / Movistar Yamaha MotoGP / Yamaha / +7.679
3 #26 Dani PEDROSA / SPA / Repsol Honda Team / Honda / +28.100
7 #6 Stefan BRADL / GER / Aprilia Racing Team Gresini / Aprilia / +50.983
MotoGP™ World Standings:
1 #93 Marc MARQUEZ / SPA / Repsol Honda Team / Honda / 41
2 #46 Valentino ROSSI / ITA / Movistar Yamaha MotoGP / Yamaha / 33
3 #26 Dani PEDROSA / SPA / Repsol Honda Team / Honda / 27
13 #6 Stefan BRADL / GER / Aprilia Racing Team Gresini / Aprilia 9