POSITIVE FIRST DAY FOR MARTIN AND DIGGIA IN CATALUNYA
The opening day of the Catalunya Grand Prix has started in an unusual way for the Moto3 field and the Team Del Conca Gresini Moto3 riders, who made the most of the dry afternoon session after the mixed conditions encountered in FP1.
Jorge Martin was amongst the quickest riders of the day courtesy of the 1’54.950 lap-time logged during Free Practice 2. The young Spaniard mainly worked on his race pace by lapping almost exclusively on hard-compound tyres and was eventually only 0.7secs away from the top of the timesheets.
Despite being only 14th at the end of the two free practice sessions – although four tenths of a second slower than his team mate – Fabio Di Giannantonio had a positive day at the office.
Moto3 action will resume tomorrow morning at 9am local time (GMT +2) for Free Practice 3, before the qualifying session scheduled to get underway at 12:35.
6th JORGE MARTIN #88
“It was a kind of a strange day today: this morning we only did a couple of laps to figure out how the new chicane is, and I have to say that it’s more suitable for karting than for a motorcycle racing world championship. I felt really good on the bike this afternoon, though, even though track conditions have got much worse compared to last year. I rode on my own and found a good rhythm, which is very important ahead of the race; despite not being too quick with the soft tyre, I was able to finish not too far from the top, which is very encouraging.”
14th FABIO DI GIANNANTONIO #21
“The track is very bumpy and in bad conditions, but apart from that I felt very comfortable on the bike. We basically only rode in the afternoon session and we pushed hard straight away; I would have surely been much higher up in the timesheets if it wasn’t for some traffic on track in the last sector. There’s some work to do, especially at the front-end of the bike, but we had a good start to the weekend.”