A second and a half quicker and the one minute fifty-eight second barrier broken: encouraging results from Saturday’s qualification for Karel Abraham at the bwin Czech Republic Grand Prix. The Czech rider achieved his best qualification result of this year’s season, and will start his home race in ninth position. Qualification was won in style by Jorge Lorenzo, whose time of 1:55.799 smashed the Masaryk Circuit’s previous record for any motorcycle competition. Karel Abraham was 1.974 seconds slower.
Karel Abraham
“I think that today went well and everything has helped lift the mood of the team. We’ve achieved what we set out to achieve – we’ve come in at under a minute and fifty-eight seconds and there’s still room for improvement. What’s more, we are not too far behind the riders in front of us. I feel a lot more comfortable on the bike. Whereas the changes we made on the bike yesterday made things worse, the opposite was the case today. We’ve made a great step forward. After today I certainly have a lot less to worry about.”
Marco Grana, chief mechanic, team Cardion AB Motoracing
“I’m satisfied with the results of qualification – we cut two seconds from yesterday’s time and 1:57.7 was our target lap time. We still have a problem with sector 2, where we’re losing about 0.8 seconds. This is now our main challenge. If we can overcome it, we‘ll be able to go under one minute fifty-seven seconds. With regards to the crash at the end of the session - there’s nothing really to sort out. It happened right in the ‘bad’ sector, when Karel was trying to speed things up. We’ve really sorted out a lot of problems – there’s no problem with the tyres, and I’m sure that as long as we get a good start, we’ll be able to remain in the top ten without difficulty and ride the race in the times made during qualifying.”
Cardion AB Ducati Press Release
You can give your opinion on our Facebook page here
Get the latest update on our Twitter page here
