NAVARRO ON THE BACKFOOT AFTER OPENING DAY AT MUGELLO
Jorge Navarro has not enjoyed the best of starts in the Italian Grand Prix: the Federal Oil Team Gresini rider was 20th in the combined times of today’s two Moto2 free practice sessions at the Mugello Circuit after setting his fastest lap-time in 1’53.597secs.
The 19-year-old Spaniard managed to make a big step forward between the two sessions and improved his best lap-time by almost half a second; despite the improvement, Navarro has yet to find the same feeling with the bike he had last week at Misano during the two-day private test.
One of the most active riders on track with 40 laps completed throughout the day, Jorge has worked hard with his crew to completely turn around the set-up of his Kalex Honda machine and, with the soft tyre option, he managed to log some interesting times. Navarro will try tomorrow to bridge the gap with the top-10, which at the moment is less than half a second.
20th – JORGE NAVARRO #9
“It’s been a complicated day, I really wasn’t expecting to struggle that much here at Mugello. The Misano test was a boost of confidence after what happened at Le Mans, but things aren’t going much better here at the moment. Obviously, Misano and Mugello are two very different tracks, but I thought I could start with the right foot here. We changed many things from morning to afternoon and things have improved a bit. The feeling is better, especially with the soft tyre which is likely to be our choice for the race. We will try to find some more grip tomorrow and a bit better handling.”
