Alvaro Bautista gets down to work at Rio Hondo track

Just a week after the American round in Austin, which brought Aprilia Racing Team Gresini their first point thanks to Alvaro Bautista’s placing, MotoGP begins practice for the Argentinian GP.

The first two sessions on the Termas de Rio Hondo track were conditioned by the condition of the tarmac. The quite dirty and not very rubberised surface create a particular tyre wear situation.

Even in these conditions Bautista (11th in the morning and 22nd in the second session) and Melandri (19th in FP1 and 24th in FP2) moved forward working on the evolution of the RS-GP bikes.

ALVARO BAUTISTA
“The track was very hungry today and it ate up all the tyres. Already from this morning we had to use two sets of tyres and in the afternoon I went out with a used tyre. By the end I really didn’t have any rubber left to try and improve on my time. Tomorrow we’ll have to work hard to improve our grip anyway. But I also think that a better asphalt grip situation will be a great help since such poor traction particularly penalises us.”

Source: Gresini