ROOM FOR IMPROVEMENT AFTER DAY 1 FOR DEL CONCA GRESINI MOTO3 RIDERS
The opening day of action for the Malaysian Grand Prix has drawn to a close and, by the looks of it, it is going to be a very challenging weekend weather-wise for the Moto3 World Championship riders. With the sun shining in the morning and the rain falling in the afternoon, Team Del Conca Gresini Moto3’s Jorge Martin and Fabio Di Giannantonio were 9th and 25th, respectively, in the combined times of today’s two free practice sessions at the Sepang International Circuit.
Martin, who mainly worked on his pace, has logged a personal best lap-time of 2’14.184, which was slightly more than a second off the top of the timesheets. The young Spaniard needs to find a better feeling on wet track conditions, but on the dry he feels he will be ready to battle for top positions in tomorrow’s qualifying – scheduled to get underway at 12:35 local time (GMT +8).
Fabio Di Giannantonio had a steadier start to the weekend as he was only 25th today after being unable to find the right feeling with his Honda NSF250RW on both dry and wet conditions. But the Italian is not giving up and he will try to bounce back tomorrow in order to get a good grid position for Sunday’s race.
9th – JORGE MARTIN #88
“It’s been a quite positive day. This morning we mainly worked on our race pace: we were among the few riders who didn’t change tyres and the lap-times were good. This is obviously very positive ahead of the race. We still need to improve the feeling on the wet, but we can do that tomorrow already.”
25th – FABIO DI GIANNANTONIO #21
“Today hasn’t gone according to plans. We experienced some front-end issues on the dry and it was hard for me to get the bike turning, while in wet conditions it was the rear-end that was moving too much, especially on fast corner, so it was difficult to get comfortable with it. We know what to do for both situations so I’m confident that we’ll be ready for tomorrow’s action.”
