RODRIGO PROVISIONALLY IN Q2 AS ROSSI LEARNS HIS WAY AROUND COTA
The state of Texas has welcomed the MotoGP World Championship with sunshine for the third event of the 2019 season – the Grand Prix of Americas. For both riders of Team Kömmerling Gresini Moto3 this Friday of free practice was more about trying, learning and adapting as Rodrigo tested his race pace whilst Rossi had a first taste of the long US circuit.
Gabriel Rodrigo was among the most active riders on track in both FP2 sessions; he eventually finished eighth in the combined times, less than a second away from today’s best lap-time (+0.925secs). With the access to Q2 practically sealed – especially with rain expected in tomorrow morning’s FP3 – Rodrigo will have one less thing to worry about.
Despite the overall positioning, it was a positive day for Riccardo Rossi: the American track suits well the Italian rookie’s riding style as he put together a significant number of laps while searching for the best lines. He eventually finished in 28thposition with a best time of 2’21.231.
8th– GABRIEL RODRIGO #19
“FP1 went very well as I felt good on the bike even on my own. With hard tyres in FP2 and higher temperatures my grip was really lowed – and so I struggled. I tried to change my riding style a little bit but things weren’t improving. I had to go back to the pits and change tyres, and after that I felt a lot better: my time was decent enough for Q2 despite the traffic. We will not work to improve the front-end feeling, which is where I lacked the most grip.”
28th– RICCARDO ROSSI #54
“It’s really a great track, but also very difficult: I lose a lot of time in the first split and once you get a corner wrong, you get them all wrong. There is a lot of work to do as we’re really far away from the top of the timesheets, but we’ll study the telemetry as I already saw many of the mistakes I made – so I hope it won’t rain tomorrow because I want to have the time to improve.”
