TT Assen: SIGNIFICANT IMPROVEMENTS DURING FRIDAY’S FP2
Stefan Bradl wasn’t entirely happy with his results after the first practice sessions in Assen as some trails in respect to electronic configurations were costly in terms of valuable track time.
The weather is always an unknown factor in the northern part of the Netherlands. Heavy overnight rain from Thursday to Friday early morning was the reason for not perfect track conditions this morning when the first free practice session got underway. For this reason, Bradl and his crew in Aprilia Racing Team Gresini started their tasks with some tests to the electronic but which didn’t bring the hoped steps forward. So after a change back to the base setting, which was done for FP2 in the afternoon, Bradl felt comfortable with his factory Aprilia RS-GP again.
#6 Stefan BRADL (Aprilia Racing Team Gresini, Aprilia), FP1: P20 – 1´36.283 (16/16) / FP2: P17 – 1´35.056 (16/19):
“This morning we tried a different electronic configuration for the throttle management but this didn’t give me a good feeling so for the second session we went back to our standard base in this respect. At least towards the end of FP2 we were able to put in some good laps. So for this reason, I can’t be 100 percent satisfied because we still have some room to work. But I’m not too worried, because in terms of the chassis, our RS-GP is working well. We just still lack a bit of agility during the fast changes of direction which are so typical for Assen and critical for lap times. In any case, I’m confident that we’ll manage to find the proper setting for this in order to be faster tomorrow morning.”
MotoGP™ Combined Free Practice Times:
1 #29 Andrea IANNONE / ITA / Ducati Team / Ducati / 1´33.591 (FP2)
2 #46 Valentino ROSSI / ITA / Movistar Yamaha MotoGP / Yamaha / 1´33.595 +0.004 (FP2)
3 #93 Marc MARQUEZ / SPA / Repsol Honda Team / Honda / 1´33.724 +0.133 (FP2)
17 #6 Stefan BRADL / GER / Aprilia Racing Team Gresini / 1´35.056 +1.465 (FP2)