MotoGP GP of Aragón – MotorLand Aragón
The riders of team Reale Avintia Racing had a good first day at the Grand Prix of Aragón, with Xavier Simeon improving aboard the Ducati GP17 of injured team-mate Tito Rabat and with newcomer Jordi Torres finishing only a little more than a second behind the second-last rider.
Since the weekend has only just begun, both Simeon and Torres are convinced they can improve further. The Belgian rider will focus on the set-up of hisbike in order to be more consistent, whereas the Spanish rider from Rubí will work on adapting his aggressive riding style to suit and get the maximum out of his Ducati.
FP3 will take place at 9:55 h on Saturday morning, whereas the qualifying runs for the starting grid will start at 14:10 h.
“It was a very positive day despite a technical problem with one of the bikes. This aside, I am very happy with the first day because it didn’t go bad at all. My lap time was decent even though I still have to improve my rhythm and consistency a lot. This bike wears the rear tyre out quite quickly and we have to work on this aspect. I hope to make another step forward tomorrow. I will try to give it all in Q1 in order to be as close to the front as possible on the starting grid.”
“I honestly thought it would be much more difficult to ride in this category and on this bike than it really was. I also want to say that the team made it very easy for me to get used to the bike step by step. They gradually gave me more engine power, taking the traction control back bit by bit, which made the bike always a bit more difficult to tame, but also more enjoyable for me. It was an exciting day with high expectations from many sides, but I was not satisfied. I am the first one to put pressure on myself. There is no doubt that we should have done lap times around 1’50.6 or 1’50.7 and the fact that we didn’t achieve this is my fault. I am still unable to string a good lap without any small mistakes together, I still need to be more precise and consistent. I also didn’t want to take any risks because it wasn’t the day to do that. To get to the point where we are now was relatively easy, but to improve further will be tough. It’s not so much a question of bravery or riding style than to figure out how to do cover the straights in the shortest possible. Every time I want to accelerate earlier or brake later, I make mistakes. But this night, I will re-think everything and tomorrow, I hope to get a bit closer.”
