ALVARO BAUTISTA RIDES HIS APRILIA RS-GP JUST SHORT OF THE TOP-10 IN FP1, SECOND SESSION CONDITIONED BY A CRASH
IMPROVING SENSATIONS FOR STEFAN BRADL
The MotoGP Barcelona weekend, the second round of the 2016 season on Iberian soil, opened up with the two Friday sessions.
In FP1 Alvaro Bautista demonstrated a good pace straight away, riding his Aprilia RS-GP to thirteenth place with a time of 1’43.180, just over a second behind the top time. This is an encouraging start on his home track, a sign of the hard work carried out in the Aprilia garage. During the initial phases of the second session, Alvaro fell victim to a crash without any physical consequences, but compromising the planned performance for FP2. Back on the track with the second bike, with which he did not find the right feeling straight away, he was unable to improve on his time from this morning, and he finished with a 1’43.292 that places him in 16th place for the combined standings.
Lagging a bit behind was his Aprilia Racing Team Gresini teammate, Stefan Bradl, who finished the day in 19th place, but improving from one session to the next (1’44.009 in the morning and 1’43.502 in the afternoon FP2). In any case, the 37 total laps the German put in represent a good base on which the Aprilia engineers will be able to set up their analysis and the related decisions for the set-up to use tomorrow, when the starting grid order will be decided.