The Moto2 World Championship continued apace at Brno this afternoon where two extra names in the shape of Gino Rea and Lucas Mahias were added to a packed entry list for the tenth round of the season. The more familiar name of Pol Espargaró was the dominant force on the opening day, however, the Spaniard on top of the standings for the majority of both free practice sessions before being dislodged by Mika Kallio in the closing stages.
With less than a second covering the top twenty riders the weekend is far from decided, however, and MAPFRE Aspar riders Jordi Torres and Nico Terol are still confident of having their say on Sunday despite finishing down in sixteenth and seventeenth place respectively. Nico was ninth this morning and Jordi tenth, before completing an exhaustive programme of set-up alterations aimed at improving traction and corner speed. The hard work done today should facilitate improvements tomorrow in the final free practice before qualifying takes place in the afternoon.
16th Jordi Torres 2.03.904 (35 laps):
“I know we can be fast here at Brno but after the first session this morning we knew we had to make some changes to the bike to improve corner speed in particular. Overall we have a good set-up but I need to feel a bit more confident on the bike in the turns. This is a wide circuit with some long straights so we also need to improve our corner exit so that we don't lose out so much on the straights. We set a good pace this morning and then spent the afternoon playing around with the setting so even though we are in sixteenth we are not in bad shape and I think we've done a good job.”
17th Nico Terol 2.03.925 (31 laps):
“I had a good feeling with the bike as soon as I went out this morning but then we had a tyre turn on the rim and it broke our rhythm. In the afternoon we went with a shorter wheelbase We wanted to see if we could get the bike handling better but with the harder front we didn't get the required response so we went back to the soft front and rear. We will take a step backwards towards our base setting tomorrow because it tends to work well at most tracks.”
Mapfre Aspar Moto2 Press Release
