American wild card entries Steve Rapp and Aaron Yates both went fast enough during Friday morning’s MotoGP practice session to qualify for the Red Bull Indianapolis Grand Prix.
Normally, riders must record a lap time that’s within 107% of the fastest lap time turned during the one and only MotoGP qualifying session to earn a grid spot, but if a rider does a lap time within 107% of the leader’s time in any individual practice session it also qualifies them for the race.
Casey Stoner led the first MotoGP practice with a time of 1:41.925, and 107% of that time is 1:49.060.
Rapp lapped the 2.6-mile infield road course at Indianapolis Motor Speedway in 1:46.619 on his Kawasaki-powered Attack Performance Racing (APR) Claiming Rule Teams (CRT) racebike, and Yates did a 1:48.054 on his Suzuki-engined BCL Motorsports/GPTech GP212 CRT racebike.
Rapp and Yates both benefitted from less than ideal track conditions, which caused Stoner to be about two seconds off the race lap record, 1:39.807, and three seconds off the Circuit Best lap record, 1:38.850. But both Rapp and Yates also dealt with problems during the session.
“It can only get better,” Yates told Roadracingworld.com at the end of the first practice. “It [motorcycle] felt pretty good when we were testing here the other day. Today, we started with a different setup just to see what it would do. It didn’t work out too good. So now we’re going to back to how it was at the end of the test to see if I can get a better feel for the rear of the bike.”
Asked for his thoughts on making the grid, Yates said, “That’s kind of surprising. Geoff [Maloney, GPTech owner] was telling me about that the other day. If you run within 107% in any session you’re in. We’ll take that, because we didn’t have the package to run fast that session. That was just another test for us. Hopefully, we’ll be able to get the bike working again and knock a couple of seconds off this afternoon.”
“The bike feels great,” Rapp told Roadracingworld.com. “We made a lot of little discoveries since the last test, and they improved the bike in every area. It felt great. I got behind James Ellison and his Aprilia on the back straightaway. We came out onto it at about the same speed and he didn’t pull me at all.
“But something happened with our motor. I was coming out of Turn One and I felt the bike slowing down, like the rear brake was on. I pulled in the clutch and the rear wheel locked up but the engine was still running.”
Attack Performance Racing Team Owner/Crew Chief Richard Stanboli said he was going to pull the World Superbike-spec Kawasaki ZX-10R engine out of Rapp’s bike and rebuild it rather than install their back-up engine, which is a less-powerful AMA-spec Superbike engine. Stanboli hopes to complete the work before Friday afternoon’s practice session but realizes he may miss the session to repair his best engine.