Free practice for the USGP got underway at the legendary Laguna Seca circuit today with the MotoGP class supported on track by national championships as opposed to the usual Moto3 and Moto2 support categories. Dani Pedrosa set the pace in both sessions, followed in each by the same order of Lorenzo, Stoner, Spies, Dovizioso and Crutchlow. With ideal temperatures of around 20ºC the lap times were already inside the records from 2010 on an impressive opening day of action that was interrupted by a red flag with ten minutes remaining after a crash for Rossi caused damage to the air fences.
Once again there was very little to separate the POWER ELECTRONICS Aspar pair of Aleix Espargaró and Randy de Puniet, the Spaniard edging out his French team-mate by just 0.035 seconds as the fastest CRT on track. Aleix improved by a massive 1.5 seconds between the two sessions whilst Randy's pace was up even more, by three seconds, after some technical setbacks during the morning outing. The pair lie eleventh and twelfth fastest respectively overnight with two MotoGP prototypes behind them.
11th Aleix Espargaró 1.23.835 (39 laps): “This is a totally new circuit for us with no prior data and the electronics didn't work as we'd hoped this morning. We reset them for the afternoon and the improvement was notable. I am happy with the first day but we'll try to keep improving tomorrow. In Italy we thought we'd struggle to compete with the MotoGP prototypes because of the long straight but we were closer than we expected and here it is the opposite. It is a slow and short circuit and we are some way off the top lap times. We have to improve power in the bottom three gears. We are using the same chassis that we tested at Mugello so we'll see if we can get more out of it tomorrow. I really like the Corkscrew but personally I am more impressed by the elevation change at the end of the main straight.”
12th Randy De Puniet 1.23.870 (31 laps): “It hasn't been a smooth landing for us here at Laguna Seca, due to some electronic problems that held us back this morning. Luckily we were able to fix them for the second session. We worked against the clock to improve the engine braking and even though I am still not completely confident with the bike here I am sure we can get back to 100% tomorrow because we have so much room to improve. Despite the problems I feel optimistic because of the way we worked things out. Tomorrow we will keep working on the electronics and the gearbox. This track is so different to anywhere else and there is a lot of work to do.”
Aspar Power Electronics Press Release
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