Alvaro Bautista lines up in tenth place on Argentine grid
Alvaro BautistaMotoGPNews April 9, 2017 Gareth Bouch
The Grand Prix of Argentina is set for its fourth edition at the Autódromo de Termas del Río Hondo and for the fourth time it will be Marc Márquez who starts from pole position. The Spaniard produced a masterclass in wet conditions this afternoon to leave his closest rival trailing by some seven tenths of a second.
Álvaro Bautista had qualified directly for Q2 thanks to his fifth best time in free practice but he wasn’t quite able to match his dry performance in the wet and will start from tenth. The Spaniard is hoping that the weather improves for tomorrow so that he can return to the sharp end of the field in the race.
10th Álvaro Bautista 1:49.724 (8 laps):
“It’s always more difficult in the wet than the dry but we did a really good job yesterday and I was confident with my rhythm. However, we were barely able to get any work done this morning and just before the second practice of the day it started to rain so it cost us a few minutes of preparation. We went straight into qualifying not feeling completely comfortable with the electronics. Hopefully tomorrow the weather is more like yesterday so that we can challenge higher than tenth. I would have liked to finish further forward, nobody is ever completely satisfied with anything but first place, but the conditions were strange, between wet and dry. We are clear that we will use the medium compound rear tyre but we are still unsure on the front because I still haven’t tried the hard option, so that’s the only doubt we have going into the race. But I felt pretty good on the medium. I want to congratulate Karel and the team because it is a very important result for everybody. Maybe he took more risks than everybody else today so let’s see if we can both cap it off tomorrow with a good result to make the whole team happy.”
Source: Aspar
