Team Suzuki Press Office – August 28.
The wide and fast Silverstone circuit has proved tricky to work out for the GSX-RR which has never been around this track before. The bumpy Tarmac has been especially hard to master, making it difficult for the riders to choose the perfect line through the corners.
But Team SUZUKI ECSTAR ended the first day of practice with positive positions in the overall classification and – most importantly – good feelings with their bikes. Aleix Espargarò is in sixth place with 2'02.872 and Maverick Viñales 12th with a 2'03.391s lap-time.
Espargaro's day started with an immediate improvement in the feeling with his machine, a positivity that he had missed in the last few races. The modifications applied to the geometry and set-up gave positive feedback, allowing the Spaniard to find a more comfortable overall feeling so he was able to work hard to consistently improve his lap times. In the afternoon the fresh soft tyre used in different runs allowed him to find a renewed effectiveness over the single lap, finally finding his own fastest lap only around half a second from the provisional pole position.
Viñales on his side focused on finding an effective set-up to feel confident with the pace, intensively working with the hard tyre making further steps forward with geometry and set-up. In the afternoon he could make some attempts with the soft tyre as well, but he couldn't find a proper feeling to be fast over the single lap, therefore needing some more work before tomorrow’s qualifying session.
Davide Brivio – Team Manager:
“It was a positive Friday for Aleix, who could finally get back some of the feeling he was missing for the last races. He got into the top-10 and this is good also for his morale. We will try to further improve things for him, so he can approach the race in the best way possible. Maverick continued his work of preparation; then he couldn't best exploit the soft tyres when he was to do the fast lap-attack. We will have to investigate further what happened, but we hope that tomorrow it will not rain in order to get another chance to enter the top-10.”
Aleix Espargaro:
“Well I'm happy enough for today, at least I reclaimed some of the confidence I lost in the last races. With my crew we did many changes in the bike set-up and finally I found the positive feeling I had with the front-end in the first half of the season. At Indy and Brno I didn't feel comfortable with the cornering speed and now we have made some progress, although we still have room for improvement. I tried both hard and soft tyres, my feeling is that with the latter we can improve even more, although already being only half-a-second from the top is positive, assuming that this on paper is not one of our favourite circuits. Tomorrow we will try to find even more pace and improvements, we have some ideas to work on; and I believe we can do more.”
Maverick Viñales:
“We did a very good job today and the result at the end was positive enough. I tried to tackle our race-pace at first, working on the set-up with the hard tyre in order to set the pace and we could improve our times run-after-run, being not so far from the top. Then when I tried with the soft tyre something went wrong, I couldn't find the proper confidence and this prevented me finishing in a higher place in the classification. It's something strange we need to further investigate. Here also the track is difficult because it has a lot of bumps and the line you chose can make a huge difference on pace, therefore tomorrow I will focus a lot on my riding style in order to find the best lines and be consistent.”
GP of Great Britain – Classification after FP2:
1. Jorge LORENZO, Movistar Yamaha MotoGP - 2'02.338
2. Marc MARQUEZ, Repsol Honda Team – 2'02.371 +0.033
3. Bradley SMITH, Monster Yamaha Tech 3 – 2'02.531 +0.193
4. Dani PEDROSA, Repsol Honda Team – 2'02.573 +0.235
5. Andrea DOVIZIOSO, Ducati Team – 2'02.761 +0.423
6. Aleix ESPARGARO, Team SUZUKI ECSTAR – 2'02.872 +0.534
7. Pol ESPARGARO, Monster Yamaha Tech 3 – 2'02.972 +0.634
8. Andrea IANNONE, Ducati Team – 2'03.219 +0.881
9. Scott REDDING, EG 0,0 Marc VDS – 2'03.284 +0.946
10. Valentino ROSSI, Movistar Yamaha MotoGP – 2'03.327 +0.989
11. Danilo PETRUCCI, Octo Pramac Racing – 2'03.339 +1.001
12. Maverick VIÑALES, Team SUZUKI ECSTAR – 2'03.391 +1.053
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