Losail (Qatar), 19 March 2016 – In his first qualifiers with the new Aprilia RS-GP, Alvaro Bautista continued the constant process of improving his lap times. In fact, he finished with 1’56.595, which is his best time since the start of the weekend where he has been consistently improving in every session. His performance, although marred by a crash, earned him the sixth row on the starting grid for the GP that will open up the 2016 championship season.

The same result was not to be for his teammate on Aprilia Racing Team Gresini, Stefan Bradl, After improving steadily until yesterday (1’57.069), Bradl was unable to repeat the performance and, also hindered by a crash with no serious consequences in FP4, he finished the qualifying session with 1’57.216, a time that places him on the seventh row. Now the focus shifts to the races tomorrow, when Bautista and Bradl will need to rely on a good race pace - taking advantage of the warm up session to achieve it - in order to improve on their performance during practice.