#ARAGONGP: MARTIN 4thON HIS OWN AS DIGGIA IMPROVES
The MotorLand Aragón Circuit has welcomed back the FIM MotoGP World Championship with high temperature and sun shining in what was a busy day at the office for riders and teams involved. Team Del Conca Gresini Moto3 have done a good job by placing Jorge Martin and Fabio Di Giannantonio in fourth and thirteenth, respectively, in the combined times of today’s two FP sessions.
Jorge Martin mainly worked on his race pace as he completed 29 laps without the use of any painkiller. The Spaniard, who is still feeling a bit of pain in the wrist – that was surgically repaired one month ago – came four tenths of a second short than Bastianini’s best lap. Martin’s lap-time arrived without the aid of any slipstream that gives hope for tomorrow’s qualifying in which – as the current championship leader stated – some help by riders ahead might be needed for what would be his eighth pole position of the year.
Fabio Di Giananntonio ended the day in 13th place with more than a second gap from the top. The Italian did not lap as much in the morning as the track was quite dirty – he completed only eight laps – as he mainly turned his attention on the afternoon session and improved his lap-time by more than two and a half seconds. Tomorrow is qualifying day already, with the crucial session to get underway at 12:35 local time (GMT +2).
4th– JORGE MARTIN #88
“It was a positive day. We come from a test in which we found something more engine-wise, but at the same time it cost me something regarding the feeling with the bike. We are working in this direction, trying to improve mainly the engine brake but also the rear brake: the bike rear-end lifts up quite a lot and I can’t hit the brakes the way I would like. We wanted to lap on our own in order to find the right rhythm for Sunday: we are losing a lot on the back straight, so we might need a slipstream for tomorrow – without forgetting about Sunday either!”
13th– FABIO DI GIANNANTONIO #21
“This morning the track was not perfect as there was some dirt that didn’t allow us to work the way we wanted, so we chose to save one tyre for the afternoon. We improved during FP2 a lot from the early laps and then with the soft tyre we made another step. I was expecting a bit more, but the set-up is not bad overall. We need to find something more in the quicker sections of the circuit, but I’m happy with today. Tomorrow the first two rows of the grid are within range.”
