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Bad weather hampers Team Conca Gresini’s progress in Qatar

The final pre-season test has drawn to a close for Team Del Conca Gresini Moto3 at the Losail International Circuit in Qatar, the same venue hosting the opening Grand Prix of the Moto3 World Championship in less than a week’s time.

Standard bearers Fabio Di Giannantonio and Jorge Martin have continued their preparation to the first event of the year, although their track-time was reduced by unexpected rain showers on day one and by heavy winds which turned into a sand storm today.

Young Italian rider Di Giannantonio was able to complete 45 laps with a personal best time of 2’08.074 and the same good feeling found with his Honda NSF250RW few days before in Jerez. His Spanish team mate Martin, on the other hand, has positively impressed on the single lap by logging in 2’06.729s, which turned out to be the second quickest lap-time of the Qatari test. The 19-year-old from Madrid also displayed an encouraging race pace on board his Honda machine equipped with hard compound race tyres. Martin had a small crash at turn 15 on day two, from which he escaped uninjured.

JORGE MARTIN

“Yesterday’s crash was a high-speed one, but there was no major drama. Today the strong winds did not allow us to take to the track but fortunately yesterday we did work a lot on our race pace, with some encouraging results. With soft tyres the bike is moving quite a bit so we were not as quick as we could have been on the single lap, but all an all I can say that we’re ready for the opening weekend of the season.”

FABIO DI GIANNANTONIO

“Unfortunately this hasn’t been the most useful of tests, really, and it was all due to the track conditions. It rained on the first day, while today the strong winds and the sand storm kept us in the pit-box basically the whole time. We did lap yesterday, but the plan was to take our time and make the most of today’s track-time, which we did not have in the end. Basically, we’ll have to start from scratch again but I hope the weather will be on our side this time.”


Bad weather hampers Team Conca Gresini’s progress in Qatar - Gresini Racing
Bad weather hampers Team Conca Gresini’s progress in Qatar - Gresini Racing