THIRD ROW FOR SALAČ AT VALENCIA
The smile is back on Filip Salač’s face:the Czech rider, after a series of subpar performances in recents weekends, was able to show again some serious speed in this Spanish Saturday. Forced to go through Q1, he topped the timesheets with a time of 1’33.754secs and therefore made it through, before clocking the eighth-quickest time while riding on his own in the second and final qualifying session – which means third row of the grid for the final race of the season.
Jeremy Alcoba improved his feeling in the third free practice session but failed to capitalize in qualifying as he finished only with the 23rd position with a 1’34.287secs time, only two tenths away from Q2. Behind him there will be Matteo Ferrari: the #44 was tenth in Q1 with a time of 1’34.457secs, which translates in the twenty-fourth position on the grid.
8th – FILIP SALAČ #12 (1’33.844)
“It was a very positive day for us: I’m really happy because in FP3 we didn’t manage to get the direct seed to Q2, but as I knew that both me and the bike had higher potential, I went out on my own in Q1 and made it through Q2, and in the end I was eighth. I found myself again today and got the smile back on my face; I had fun and I cannot wait to get on track tomorrow and having even more fun in this last race of 2023.”
23rd – JEREMY ALCOBA #52 (1’34.287)
“We made an extraordinary improvement from yesterday and I was feeling good in the third session. Then in qualifying I struggled a bit more, and we still managed to improve by a few tenths compared to the morning but it wasn’t enough. We’ll look at the data now and try to improve some more ahead of tomorrow: this will be my last race with the team and I want to score a good result.”
24th – MATTEO FERRARI #44 (1’34.457)
“I’m happy with this second day: too bad only for the morning as we made an adjustment that cost us some time, but it’s something we needed to do and that showed in Q1, when we kept a low 1’34s pace – which is really important for tomorrow. We’ll keep analyzing the data and gathering information: we achieved the goal in qualifying and now we’ll focus on doing a good race tomorrow, hopefully with many overtakes.”
