Alvaro Bautista and the Rizla Suzuki team face a tough race at Assen tomorrow after finishing in 14th position in today’s qualifying session.

Bautista struggled with grip issues, especially on the fast left-handed turns and failed to find a setting during the course of the session to correct it.

Álvaro Bautista:
“I’m not happy with today at all! I have had a rear grip problem all day, especially entering the left corners – but really over the whole track. We worked hard to get the bike more grip, but still I struggled and this affected my confidence because I couldn’t enter the corners like I want. This was causing me to lose too much speed on the entry and then gave me problems in the exit. I don’t feel very comfortable on the bike and we’re going to try something in tomorrow’s warm-up, to give me a better feeling. It has been a difficult weekend so far and losing the practice yesterday was tough because I think if we had had that it might have helped us to find a solution. We have a chance to try something tomorrow morning, but we also have to watch the weather because it looks like it could be wet. We certainly need to do something to resolve this grip issue, because I thought we would move forward at this race after the result in Silverstone and I really wanted to do well here.”

Paul Denning – Team Manager:
“The good news is that we went 2.2 seconds quicker this afternoon than this morning, but the bad news is that everyone else went quicker as well so it didn’t improve our overall situation. Our level has been disappointing this weekend, Álvaro has no physical complaints and we’re only looking to move forward, but we just haven’t been able to produce the temperature in the left-hand-side of the tyre to give Álvaro the confidence he needs – especially towards the end of the lap. The guys will be working hard to find some more solutions overnight, but the biggest help to us right now would be warmer weather and bright sunshine tomorrow, so that we can get the rear tyre working properly.”

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