Qatar GP: STEADILY IMPROVEMENTS ON DAY TWO AT LOSAIL
Stefan Bradl was able to make good progress during both Friday evening sessions aboard his all-new Aprilia RS-GP.
The 26-year-old Bavarian showed up happy as he experiences a faultless start so far into the first race weekend this season. Apart of some strong winds conditions again were good so Bradl and his crew in Aprilia Racing Team Gresini could took most benefit from all three free practice sessions to work on their schedule according to the still young project’s plans. Beyond that fact the Aprilia rider was able to do a lot of lap so far this weekend at the floodlighted Losail International Circuit. In doing so he was able to deliver very valuable feedback about the bike’s characteristic to his engineers too. However, the most important aspect came by the significantly improved lap times with every session completed.
#6 Stefan BRADL (Aprilia Racing Team Gresini, Aprilia), FP2: P20 – 1´57.541 (15/16) / FP3: P20 – 1´57.069 (17/17):
“Basically, things went encouraging this weekend so far. Not just only because of that fact that no bigger issues occur but foremost that I’m able to do a lot of laps every time I went out on track. In addition, we are able to improve our lap time by almost half a second session by session. I’m feeling more comfortable with my new RS-GP and I get more used to the whole package. Unfortunate the feeling yesterday was not as I had expected, so we got off to a bit of a slow start but now we’re making ground up. We make steady progress which makes feeling confident. We still have a long way ahead of us but if we can keep this growth of the project with this pace I’m pretty sure that we’ll be able to get there quickly. Another positive fact is that we are able to solve every small issue quickly that occur by the time. Of course we are losing some precious time during the sessions but we are on a good way to get closer and closer to the ideal basis setup we need. However, first I look forward to our first qualifying runs with our new prototype machine.”
MotoGP™ Combined Practice Times FP1/FP2/FP3:
1 #29 Andrea IANNONE / ITA / Ducati Team / Ducati / 1´54.639 (FP3)
2 #99 Jorge LORENZO / SPA / Movistar Yamaha MotoGP / Yamaha / 1´54.776 +0.137 (FP3)
3 #93 Marc MARQUEZ / SPA / Repsol Honda Team / Honda / 1´54.835 +0.196 (FP3)
20 #6 Stefan BRADL / GER / Aprilia Racing Team Gresini / 1´57.069 +2.430