SECOND SPANISH 2016 MOTOGP ROUND
BARCELONA AN IMPORTANT TEST BENCH FOR THE APRILIA RS-GP
The MotoGP World Championship returns to Spain for the second round of the season on Iberian soil. After Jerez, now it’s Barcelona’s turn on the Catalunya Circuit, a particularly demanding track for bikes and riders.
The Aprilia riders, Alvaro Bautista and Stefan Bradl, would like to get back to the encouraging levels demonstrated in the first part of the season. The growth of the Aprilia RS-GP project, which proved straight away to be a good starting base, requires hard work, especially in light of the little time available and the overall competitive level that the championship has reached.
Therefore, for Aprilia Racing Team Gresini, the Catalunya GP represents another important exam, to be tackled with maximum concentration and drawing from everything learned during the first six races of the season. Some important help will arrive from Misano, where the Aprilia Test Team has completed two days of testing with Mike di Meglio and Stefan Bradl.
ROMANO ALBESIANO – APRILIA RACING MANAGER
“In the Misano tests with Mike and Stefan, we tested some new chassis solutions that help us increase the grip and stability of the RS-GP, especially working on the rear suspension. From an electronics point of view, we are working on the engine management and shifting strategies, a phase that amplifies the movements, generating instability. We also took advantage of the two days as a first contact that will allows us to come to our second home GP with a bit more data. The goal at Barcelona is to get back to the competitive levels we had shown in the first part of the season, in particular at the Jerez round where the weekend was a crescendo of positive sensations”.
FAUSTO GRESINI – TEAM MANAGER
“We are going to Barcelona with the goal of taking a step forward, even if the round in Catalunya will be another one in uncharted territory for us, since we have never tested on the Montmelò circuit with the new bike. We were expecting to achieve a bit more at Mugello, so over the past few days we have tried to analyse all the data closely and the Aprilia engineers have continued working hard. Now we’ll wait to get onto the track for the first feedback, but we are confident that we’ll be competitive straight away”.
ALVARO BAUTISTA
“Barcelona will be my second home round. It’s a track that I like very much, with long turns where you need plenty of traction to keep from sliding and losing ground. We need to get back to being competitive, like we were at Jerez, for example, starting from the good job on the chassis that we were able to do at Mugello. I am expecting a good weekend. We will need to be good at understanding straight away what we need in order to be fast at Montmelò. If we work hard in practice we’ll be able to get back to battling for a top 10 finish”.
STEFAN BRADL
“Catalunya is a great track, where we need to get back to our level. In the last two races we learned a lot, accumulating experience on the RS-GP, so I expect to start from a better base at Barcelona that we can build on throughout the weekend. Usually temperatures are very high for this race, another element that we will have to take into consideration. In the Misano tests we tried various new setting, collecting data that will definitely be useful in Spain”.