Reale Avintia Academy 77 – GP of Catalunya– Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya

Reale Avintia Academy riders, Livio Loi and Vicente Pérez, did a great start of the Catalan Gran Prix today and both pushed hard to be fast and try to give something to celebrate to the team in a difficult weekend.

Livio Loi is quite happy with the way the team worked today during the first free practice sessions at the Barcelona-Catalunya circuit. The Belgian rider finished 27th today with a best lap time of 1’50.805, but he is quite satisfied his KTM set-up so far. Tomorrow he will work to fine tune the settings of his bike and push hard to fight for the best possible place on the grid for Sunday race.

Vicente Pérez enjoyed a good day in his adaptation to the speed of Moto3 World Championship and during the first day he has been focussed in some main areas to be able to get closer to the frontrunners pace on Sunday. The rider from Valencia is racing this weekend with the number 77 to honour his teammate and friend Andreas Pérez, how sadly passed away last Monday. He finished 29th today in the combined time sheets.

“The day has been positive. We have been testing several things: tyres and some other ideas that can be useful for Sunday’s race. We are making steps forward and tomorrow we have to keep moving and improve in qualifying. We have to be there in the race and fight for Andreas. Our target is the top 10, but it won’t be easy and we will have to fight hard.”

“The start of the day was good but in the afternoon we moved back a little bit, but only if we look at the time sheets, because our real goal this afternoon was to test several things on the bike set-up. I think we are in the right way and every exit I feel better. We have to test something else tomorrow, and we hope to be closer.”