Alvaro Bautista hoping for good race despite 12th grid position at Austin

Alvaro Bautista will start from 12th on the grid on tomorrow’s Grand Prix of the Americas. The Team GO&FUN Honda Gresni rider ended the opening three practice sessions in 11th position, a result that meant he just missed being seeded straight through to QP2 by one place.

A good lap during QP1 put him into QP2, but then the Spaniard continued to struggle, closing the 15-minute session which decides the top 12 grid positions with a lap time of 2’03”923, just over a second off the pace.

ALVARO BAUTISTA (12th – 2’03″923)
“Today, like yesterday, we had another difficult day: we worked a lot looking for a set-up that could give me a better feeling with the bike together with some more rear grip, but despite various attempts we have obtained nothing positive, and I continue to have the same feelings of yesterday. Tomorrow morning during the warm up we will try the hard tyre: it’s strange, but as soon as I tried it for the first time during QP1, I was immediately fast, so we want to understand whether it can be a good option for the race. If my feeling will improve, we can be more competitive, but we start from a bad position so it will be important to make a good start. I’m still confident, the race is always a story in itself, and of course we will give the maximum to take as many points as possible”.

FAUSTO GRESINI
“Alvaro had a really troubled weekend so far and obviously we are not happy with the result. In Qatar we were protagonists, but here we are very far from the fastest riders. Unfortunately, Alvaro’s feeling with the bike is not good: tomorrow we will try more adjustments to the bike, but frankly I can’t see a solution, so I expect a very tough race”.

Source: Gresini Racing