POSITIVE VIBE AT THE END OF DAY ONE AT LOMBOK
#IndonesianGP free practice. Team Gresini Racing MotoGP had a strong start to the Indonesian Grand Prix today as both Enea Bastianini and Fabio Di Giannantonio showed great speed at this long-awaited, new track on the MotoGP calendar.
Enea Bastianini managed to finish in the top five: this is a very important result, albeit things could have gone even better. A crash during what was shaping to the best lap of the day – just before the chequered flag was deployed – prevented the current championship leader to sit atop the timesheets today. The Italian rider fortunately escaped uninjured from the tumble after losing the front-end of his Ducati machine – while the stopwatch marked -0.244secs on what ended up being the fastest lap-time of the day. Fifth place is still an encouraging result, especially if it rains tomorrow morning as that would be more than enough for Bastianini to be seeded directly to Q2.
Fabio Di Giannantonio also enjoyed a very promising start to the weekend as he ended up fourteenth at the end of day one. He was the quickest of this year’s series rookies and on many occasions, he made his way into the top ten. This is exactly the goal for the rider #49 for tomorrow as tenth position is currently only 0.3secs away.
5th – ENEA BASTIANINI #23 (1’31.921)
“We did a good job, especially in FP2. The track was quite damp this morning and we took the opportunity to work on this type of conditions as well – especially as it’s never been my best scenario. The track conditions changed in the afternoon: different grip, different tyres… I had to come up with a plan on the fly and despite a mistake towards the end, things went well. We’re still not 100% and we’ll need to make another step tomorrow – and hopefully the track will also improve. We only worked with medium tyres and soft ones for the time attack… We’ll have to try the harder option too, but today I chose to play safer.
14th – FABIO DI GIANNANTONIO #49 (1’32.418)
“I’m very happy with how today went: we made a great step with the bike compared to Qatar and I found back the type of feeling I had during the first tests. We were quick with both medium and softer tyres. To tell the truth, I couldn’t put together the perfect lap with the latter, so that means I still have some margin for tomorrow’s qualifying. Now we need to work on the rear-end of the bike, but the feeling with the front-end is there and that’s important.”
