Team GO&FUN Honda Gresini riders, Alvaro Bautista and Scott Redding, made excellent progress on day two of the official MotoGP testing ad the Losail circuit in Qatar. Bautista was the fastest man on track today with a best time of 1’55”194, which lowers by 0.7 of a second the qualifying lap time obtained by the Spaniard in last year’s Qatar Grand Prix.
Alvaro continued to work on the set-up of his Honda RC213V in order to improve the feeling with the front end, completing a total of 55 laps. Tomorrow the Spaniard will be engaged in a long run to evaluate his own pace over the race distance. Also Scott Redding and his technical staff focused their work on the front of the bike, reaching good results: the British youngster completed 47 laps today, with a best time of 1’57”154, just two tenths of a second off the best ‘Open’ Honda RCV1000R, rode by the experienced Nicky Hayden.
Alvaro Bautista (1'55"194 - 55 LAPS)
“I'm very happy about the fastest time: my sensations on the bike are better than yesterday and my feeling with the front is improved, although some problems still remain. This track, after all, has always been a bit tricky for us. We’re still not one hundred percent, but tomorrow we can take advantage of one last day of testing to try to make another step forward. There are two options: trying a significant change, that means to take a different direction, or keeping the good base reached today and try to refine it. With the regard to the race pace, today I managed to go through a lot of laps under the 1’57” mark, but these results are not significant because today I was trying everytime different adjustments on the bike. Tomorrow we will try a proper long run, in order to understand where we are ahead of the first Grand Prix”.
Scott Redding (1'57"154 - 47 LAPS)
“Today the feeling with the bike was better than yesterday: we worked a lot on the front, which now gives me more confidence when turning, together with an improved braking stability. This is helping me a lot to be more consistent. We have only one day left before my MotoGP debut, and even though we are pretty prepared ahead of the first race, tomorrow we will try a race simulation to see how the tyres works, and also how the bike behave when the fuel drops down: during all the winter tests we closed the gap to Hayden, so tomorrow we will see if we can keep the same consistency as him over the race distance”.
Go&Fun Honda Gresini Press Release
