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FIFTH AND SEVENTH ROW FOR ALEIX AND BRADLEY AT LE MANS

10 October 2020

The sunshine that riders and staff had hoped for finally brightened the French Le Mans track, but not enough to warm up the asphalt and provide the best sensations. Grip and tyre temperature were the two terms used the most during qualifying, with particular concern in view of the race tomorrow which, to top things off, will start at 1 in the afternoon, local time.

For the Aprilia riders, these difficulties made for hard work, both able to demonstrate decent pace, but less incisive in the search for pure performance. Aleix and Bradley contained the gap behind the best during FP4, the most indicative session in terms of the race, but they had to settle for the fifth and seventh row respectively in qualifying.

A bit of bad luck also contributed: in Q1, Aleix had to abort his best lap when a yellow flag came out, just as he was doing some decidedly interesting intermediate times.

ALEIX ESPARGARO’

“Not a simple day. Unfortunately, the frame I had tested and liked in Barcelona didn’t work well here. It was hard to understand yesterday in the wet, but when I went back to my standard bike today, I was immediately able to go faster. I lost my best lap in qualifying due to a yellow flag, so we’ll have to start from the fifth row, but we have the potential to recover positions. The low temperature will certainly be a problem. It will be a tough race.”

BRADLEY SMITH
“We struggled this morning, but the guys worked hard between FP3 and FP4 and I gained a bit of feeling. In FP4, I followed Aleix for a few laps, also managing to identify where he is able to be faster and I got close to his performance overall. I am also satisfied with my qualifying time, especially because I did it on my own and the slipstream can really make a difference here. Obviously, if we look at the positions, our limitations are clear and they are certainly not mitigated by the characteristics of this track and the weather conditions. We’ll have to be very careful tomorrow. It looks like there will be low temperatures for both warm up and the race and, while the rear doesn’t pose a big problem, it will be hard to keep the front up to temp.”