QUALIFIERS AT THE SACHSENRING: SIXTH ROW FOR BRADL AT HIS HOME RACE, BAUTISTA TO START FROM THE SEVENTH ROW
A sunny Saturday finally allowed Stefan Bradl and Alvaro Bautista to work consistently on developing the Aprilia RS-GP machines both for the qualifiers and, above all, for the race tomorrow, when probable tyre deterioration will demand careful management of race pace.
In particular, in FP3 both of the Aprilia Racing Team Gresini standard bearers made a clear improvement in terms of performance compared with the Friday sessions. In today's practices a new swingarm also made its first appearance on the Aprilias. Its effectiveness will now be assessed by the riders and the respective teams to decide whether or not to use it in the race.
In the Q1 session, Stefan Bradl finished in seventh place with a time of 1’22.493, a performance that earns him spot number seventeen, on the sixth row of the starting grid. Bautista, after demonstrating excellent potential in the first two sectors of the winding German circuit, several times matching some of the best partial times on the sheets, continued losing ground in the final section (T4), finishing in ninth place (nineteenth overall at 1’22.670), which places him on the seventh row of the grid tomorrow.