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SIXTH AND SEVENTH ROW FOR ESPARGARÓ AND SMITH IN THE SECOND GP AT MISANO

Aleix Espargaró and Bradley Smith will start from the sixth and seventh rows respectively in the GP of Emilia Romagna e Riviera di Rimini tomorrow, the second round of the championship on the Misano circuit.

Aleix missed going straight through to Q2 by just 189 thousandths which kept him from taking the last time that would have pre-qualified him for Q2 in the third practice session.

In the Q1 session, the Spaniard crashed just as he was doing his best lap. In fact, after beating his best times in the first two sectors, he was decidedly in the running for one of the top two spots. He finished with a time of 1’31.912 which places him sixteenth, without being able to complete a true time attack with the soft tyre.

Bradley Smith was the victim of a crash during FP4 without any physical consequences, but which forced the English rider to change bikes for qualifying. He stopped the clock at 1’32.486, which will put him on the seventh row of the starting grid tomorrow.

ALEIX ESPARGARO’
“Today I gave everything I could, starting from FP3 this morning, but it wasn’t enough to get into the top 10. I am disappointed because the RS-GP is working well. I have an outstanding feeling and I’m having fun riding. The only thing lacking is acceleration. I was able to follow various bikes and I’m able to keep pace with them. The problem is coming out of corners where even the riders who are slower than me have an advantage. This factor limits us particularly on the flying lap, because we are unable to exploit the extra grip of the new tyre. In any case, I’ll start aggressively and focused tomorrow. The gaps are still narrow, especially in terms of pace.”
BRADLEY SMITH
“Undoubtedly a tricky day. I don’t know if it was because of the wind or our settings, but I struggled a lot in the third sector. That’s also where I crashed in the tests, so that obviously doesn’t help my confidence. The FP4 session started off in the worst possible way, with a crash, but I’m pleased to have done my best time of the weekend in qualifying, managing to get my focus back. At the moment, we’re struggling to find something that will let us make a decisive step forward, but we won’t stop looking and working.”

SIXTH AND SEVENTH ROW FOR ESPARGARÓ AND SMITH IN THE SECOND GP AT MISANO - Gresini Racing
SIXTH AND SEVENTH ROW FOR ESPARGARÓ AND SMITH IN THE SECOND GP AT MISANO - Gresini Racing