MARTIN HEADS MOTO3 FIELD ON DAY ONE AT VALENCIA
The 2017 Moto3 World Championship season finale has got underway today at Cheste’s ‘Circuito Ricardo Tormo’ with Jorge Martin and his Honda NSF250RW topping the timesheets in the combined times of today’s two free practice sessions. The young Spanish rider logged a competitive 1’39.209secs lap-time, which was only twenty-six thousandths of a second slower of the best pole time from 2014 and four tenths of a second faster than second-placed rider Canet.
It was a good start to the last racing weekend of the year also for Fabio Di Giannantonio, who was 10th overall with a personal best lap-time of 1’40.134. The Italian was among the most active riders on track with 29 laps completed, which helped him concentrate on finding the best feeling with the front-end of his bike – his Achille’s this year – especially under braking at turns 1, 2 and 8.
Team Del Conca Gresini Moto3 will return to the track tomorrow with the traditional European schedule – with FP3 at 9am and qualifying at 12:35. Martin will aim for his ninth pole position of the season with Diggia hoping to get a good grid positioning for the race.
1st – JORGE MARTIN #88
“It’s been a positive day and in some ways I wasn’t expecting it. Valencia has never been one of my favourite tracks and I wasn’t too motivated. However, I found myself very comfortable on the bike straight away and I was able to better my quickest time on a Honda by a second. We worked a lot on the race distance: with used tyres we lapped in the low 1’40s and with new ones we did 1’39.2s, which is not bad at all. I still need to find a better feeling with the front-end so that I can brake a bit later and be faster and aggressive.”
10th – FABIO DI GIANNANTONIO #21
“Of all the Fridays of this year, this is definitely one of the best. We were running as high as seventh this morning and ninth this afternoon and it’s true that we’re ninth tenths of a second away, but we know there are a lot of areas where we can improve. The front-end of the bike is where we’ll need to focus the most and we surely have to solve the issues I’m experiencing under braking – where I struggle a bit.”
