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ALEIX CONFIRMS HIS SPEED IN QATAR AND GOES STRAIGHT THROUGH TO THE SECOND QUALIFYING SESSION

2 April 2021

Aleix and the new Aprilia RS-GP confirm their speed in Qatar the first day of practice on the second weekend. Leading the pack in the highly competitive FP1, a sign of outstanding performance even on hot asphalt, the duo earned direct access to Q2, just like last Friday. A good start that will let the team focus on race strategy tomorrow.

Lorenzo Savadori is also showing encouraging signs of growth, still far from a perfect feeling, but making progress. The Italian’s goal is to recover the time lost in testing during these first two weekends, putting in miles and experimenting with the settings.

ALEIX ESPARGARO’
“A good day. The track was rather different today than we were used to. With higher humidity, I felt the bike slide significantly for the first time. In any case, I felt good in both sessions. Even if FP1 is not particularly useful here, I was pleasantly surprised at the RS-GP’s performance with the heat. In FP2, after doing a good enough time to go straight through to Q2, I decided to save the tyre for tomorrow. There will be a lot of work to do in terms of race strategy. Last weekend we had extremely high tyre wear, so we’ll need to try and improve.”

LORENZO SAVADORI
“We definitely saw an improvement today. We have still not achieved our goal in terms of gap but, working on the setup and on my confidence, we are beginning to grow. This is not an easy track. Let’s just say that the start of my first world championship could have gone better, but we are working non-stop to keep progressing.”