MotoGP heads to the historic TT at Assen. After Bautista’s good result at Barcelona the Aprilia RS-GPs are on the track to confirm their progress.

Assen (Holland) – As per tradition the MotoGP round in Holland – the classic TT – will be raced on Saturday. Aprilia Racing Team Gresini arrives at the Dutch round comforted by Alvaro Bautista’s good result in the last race at Barcelona. Alvaro’s tenth place finish at Montmelò, although favoured by a few DNFs, is the team’s overall best result in this first part of the season and it is a nice injection of confidence for the rest of the championship. In any case, development of the Italian V4s moves forward, taking advantage of every race and every practice session. The Assen weekend will be no exception, especially in light of the fact that the Monday test session after Barcelona was hampered by foul weather.

ROMANO ALBESIANO (Aprilia Racing Manager)

“The result in Barcelona boosted our morale and it especially confirmed that we improve our race performance compared to the practice sessions, managing to stay in the centre of the group. This, along with the assessment of the various changes introduced from the Mugello round, helps to give us a clear idea on which areas need more work. These are experiences which are in line with the spirit of our test year and Assen will be the same, where we will bring new materials that we weren’t able to test at Montmelò on the Monday following the race due to the inclement weather.”

FAUSTO GRESINI (Team Manager)

“After taking on two fast tracks like Mugello and Barcelona we are switching to a more flowing track where it will definitely be interesting to verify the steps we’ve taken forward recently. The tenth place that Alvaro brought home from Barcelona really pumps us up: the primary goal is still developing the bike in view of the future, but it’s always a pleasure to have a good result and it represents nice compensation for the entire team, which has been working hard. We are expecting another weekend of testing, during which we want to continue gathering important data to move development of the RS-GP forward.”

ALVARO BAUTISTA

“We are coming to Holland highly motivated thanks to the nice result in Barcelona. We are still a bit disappointed because we could have completed the Spanish trip with some good post-race tests, but the poor weather kept us from doing the work we had scheduled. So we’ll bring the material to Assen that we weren’t able to evaluate during the tests: we won’t have much time to do it, but we’ll give it our best shot. The track has a lot of quick direction changes which is an area where we need to improve, so from the first free practice sessions we’ll be looking for the best setup to improve our bike’s performance in that area. In any case the whole garage is very enthusiastic and we’re ready to get down to business.”

MARCO MELANDRI

“We are going to Assen with a bit of concrete optimism. In the Barcelona tests the team provided me with a much longer swingarm that gave me a better feeling. I only took two laps because then it began to rain but I noticed that the sensation was good. I like this track and I’m confident that we’ll be taking some steps forward. Alvaro’s result gave the team a strong signal of reliability. I see the glass as half full.”