Gresini Racing » News MotoGP » ALEIX STARTS OFF STRONG AT SILVERSTONE, DIFFICULT AND PAINFUL DAY FOR LORENZO SAVADORI

ALEIX STARTS OFF STRONG AT SILVERSTONE, DIFFICULT AND PAINFUL DAY FOR LORENZO SAVADORI

27 August 2021

It was an extremely positive day in Silverstone for Aprilia, thanks to a fast and incisive Aleix Espargaró on his RS-GP. Despite the low temperatures (but the forecast is calling for an improvement), the times were interesting, with Aleix second in the FP1 session and in the lead for much of FP2. He was limited only by the traffic he ran into on his final attempt, which kept him from improving on his seventh place in the combined standings.

The situation on the other side of the garage was more complicated. Lorenzo Savadori is still in pain, especially in controlling the bike’s movements and in tackling right-handers. After a cautious first session, Lorenzo took on FP2, but he stopped before the end of the session. He’ll try to recover now and the situation will be reassessed tomorrow morning.

ALEIX ESPARGARO’
“I’m satisfied. The RS-GP is working well overall. I managed to be fast and consistent, especially in race configuration, whereas with the soft tyre, partly due to some problems with traffic, I was unable to improve as much as I would have expected. I know it’s only Friday, but here in Silverstone with the unpredictable weather, it’s important to be fast in every session. We’ll have to work on this and try to find a little something more with the soft tyre so we aren’t penalised too much by our starting position.”

LORENZO SAVADORI
“To be honest, I expected things to go better, but the fact is that you can never really know what the situation is until you get on a MotoGP bike. The track doesn’t help either. It is a very physical circuit and right now I’m unable to push and ride the way I’d like to. We tried not to turn too many laps today in order to keep the situation from getting worse. We’re working on all fronts, from pain killers to my position in the saddle to my boots. We’ll see how the situation is tomorrow and evaluate how to proceed from there.”