Alvaro Bautista will start from 12th on the grid on tomorrow’s Grand Prix of the Americas. The Team GO&FUN Honda Gresni rider ended the opening three practice sessions in 11th position, a result that meant he just missed being seeded straight through to QP2 by one place. A good lap during QP1 put him into QP2, but then the Spaniard continued to struggle, closing the 15-minute session which decides the top 12 grid positions with a lap time of 2’03”923, just over a second off the pace.
Scott Redding will start the race one place behind his team-mate, having set during QP1 an impressive best lap time of 2’04”617, over 0.4 seconds faster than Nicky Hayden, who rides a similar Open Class Honda RCV1000R.
Alvaro Bautista (12th - 2'03"923)
“Today, like yesterday, we had another difficult day: we worked a lot looking for a set-up that could give me a better feeling with the bike together with some more rear grip, but despite various attempts we have obtained nothing positive, and I continue to have the same feelings of yesterday. Tomorrow morning during the warm up we will try the hard tyre: it’s strange, but as soon as I tried it for the first time during QP1, I was immediately fast, so we want to understand whether it can be a good option for the race. If my feeling will improve, we can be more competitive, but we start from a bad position so it will be important to make a good start. I’m still confident, the race is always a story in itself, and of course we will give the maximum to take as many points as possible”.
Scott Redding (13th - 2'04"617)
“I knew that the qualifying lap was one thing I needed to work on, but today we did a really good job: I didn’t expect to make this lap time - I expected something like 2’05”0, but in the end I was feeling good and relaxed, so lap times came easily. I’m happy to be the fastest ‘Production Racer’ Honda again, but now we have to see how the race goes tomorrow, because maybe is going to be more difficult with the hard tyre. Maybe we could also use the softer tyre, but I’m going to try the hard one: if it’s not good, we will learn something. Now it’s the time to do these kind of things, because we are still early in the season”.
Go&Fun Honda Gresini Press Release
