First And Second Row Start For Bastianini And Di Giannantonio At Brno
Today’s Qualifying for the Czech Grand Prix at Brno ended with the best overall performance of the season for the Gresini Racing Team Moto3, which placed Enea Bastianini in the front row with the third fastest time and Fabio Di Giannantonio in second, with the fifth fastest time.
Enea Bastianini set his 2’08 “042 on the eighth of 11 laps, in his second outing. Then, in his third and last attempt the 18-year-old rider from Rimini was able to improve to 2’07”619, a lap time which would allow him to grab the pole position, cancelled for having exceeded track limits at turn 12. Finally, in the following lap Enea crashed without consequences, and so he had to settle for third place behind poleman Brad Binder and Andrea Migno.
His teammate Fabio Di Giannantonio set his 2’08”257 just at the end of the Qualifying session: behind Brad Binder, the 17-year-old rookie from Rome took advantage of the reference of the South African in front of him, completing a good lap and closing the session in fifth place, his best Qualifying of the season after the ninth place he got at Assen and at the Red Bull Ring.
ENEA BASTIANINI (3rd – 2’08”042)
“All in all it went pretty well today: at the beginning of the session my feeling with the bike was not so good, so I went straight back to the pits and we checked the data to figure out what was wrong, making some changes to the set-up. The second exit in fact was much better: I was able to open the throttle where I wanted, unlike previous in the previous outing, and so I made a nice lap. Finally, in my last attempt, before I slightly exceeded the track limit and so my lap time was deleted and then, on the following lap, I crashed under braking at Turn 5. Too bad, because we could have done better, but that’s ok: we have a good pace and a good set-up, so I’m happy and confident for the race. In the crash I sustained a small injury to two fingers of my left hand: I have a hairline fracture on the ring finger, but nothing serious so I think that it won’t give me problems tomorrow”.
FABIO DI GIANNANTONIO (5th – 2’08”257)
“I’m very happy for this second row, which is my best qualifying performance of the year to date! I like this track a lot, so I knew I could do well today: already in the first outing in fact I set a good lap time, 2’08”4, thanks to which I immediately entered the top five. Then, in the second exit, I found a lot of traffic, so there was no way to improve. Then we tried our best at the end, putting the last soft tyre available. Luckily I could also take advantage of Binder in front of me and so I could do a very good lap. Too bad only for a few mistakes in the first two sectors, but then I recovered well in T3 and T4, so I’m really satisfied”.
FAUSTO GRESINI
“In the final stages of the Qualifying Bastianini was doing a good lap, but he crashed. In addition, another very good lap time of Enea was cancelled for having exceeded the track, as happened to other riders. We are happy though, because we are competitive. Globally, first and second row represent the best qualifying performance of the season for the team so we can be satisfied. It won’t be easy, as always, but tomorrow we can have a good race, no doubt!”.
