Alvaro Bautista’s Suzuki once again struggled with the cold conditions in a wet and cool Mugello qualifying session. Bautista will start tomorrow’s race from 14th on the grid.

Here is what Bautista, and team manager Paul Denning, had to say about today’s qualifying for the Italian MotoGP:

Álvaro Bautista:
“Terrible is the only word I can use to explain what this afternoon was! This morning I had a good session and felt like the bike was working well. We tried a different setting to give me less movement in the corners and we made a good step forward with this. This afternoon though the conditions were horrible because it rained a bit before the start of the session and then it stopped, so I started with a used tyre just to check the track, but maybe I spent too long out there with that. When we put in the new tyres to get a good lap it started raining, so it was difficult to set a fast time. We are near the back of the grid and I will try my best to make a good start tomorrow. I have a nice rhythm from this morning and I have to forget about this afternoon, even though it was important to get a good grid position – that has gone now – and I must try my best in the race and see what happens!”

Paul Denning – Team Manager:
“We showed good potential this morning with Álvaro inside the top-six for a large part of the session and he was still doing reasonable times right at the end on tyres with race distance already on them. We should have at least been in the low 49s this afternoon with the new tyres – and on the third row at worst – but the timing of our pit-stop to change to new tyres this afternoon couldn’t have been worse as the rain started to increase. Álvaro also couldn’t get the feeling he needed to push harder on the slightly greasy track, so he couldn’t improve his time before the heavy rain fell. It’s been a disappointing afternoon and we are looking for a significant improvement – both in the position and hopefully the weather – in the race tomorrow.”

Popularity: 1% [?]

Subscribe to the post comments feeds or Leave a trackback