POWER ELECTRONICS Aspar riders battle hard in Jerez

2015-05-03 11:20
Conditions were excellent and in the beautiful setting of Jerez, Lorenzo was the man of the hour as MotoGP visited the world capital of motorcycling. The Spaniard dominated almost all the practice sessions, taking the pole with a superlative lap. And in the race he gave his rivals no glimmer of hope, leading from start to finish over the 27 laps. Valentino Rossi and Marc Marquez tried to catch up their battle for second was an interesting sub plot after what happened in Argentina. But this time the Italian was unable to catch the young World Champion. So, Lorenzo took the victory, with Marquez and Rossi racking up vital championship points as they joined him on the podium.

It seemed that Nicky Hayden could feature prominently in today's race, starting from 18th, but as the American would comment later his start and early race pace was slower than he would have hoped for. After the first third of the race, the POWER ELECTRONICS Aspar rider found his pace and, near the end, gained a position to conclude 17th. Nor did Eugene Laverty have his best day in Jerez. The Irishman made a very important improvement during the warm-up session and so he started the race with more grip, but changes in geometry excessively overloaded his forearms later in the race. The POWER ELECTRONICS Aspar rider concluded in 18th.

Nicky Hayden, 17th: "Today I have not started well and I couldn’t get on the pace at the start of the race. It was a pity not being able to lap faster at the start of the race because, seeing my pace in the second half, we could have done much better. As the laps passed I began to feel more comfortable, I was able to increase to and maintain a decent pace. In the last laps I gained a couple of places, but I'm not satisfied because Jerez is a track I like, I expected more joy here. Fortunately we have a test scheduled for tomorrow, during which we’ll try to improve our feelings. Although we have not got a good result we are evolving our electronics gradually, so I hope we can be more competitive soon."

Eugene Laverty, 18th: "Yesterday evening we did not have a good feeling, with the lack of traction, so this morning we made some changes in the warm-up session. Thanks to that we greatly improved the set-up of the bike, I managed to have more grip and be more consistent. This allowed me to start the race very well and safely at first. The changes made have helped us gain grip but affected the geometry of the bike. So we carried a lot of weight on the rear and every time we accelerated strongly the front needed a lot of control, so my arms were overworked. From the sixth lap I started to notice that I was putting pressure on my forearms. I was able to control pain for ten laps but when the bike started to slide in the final part of the race, it was almost impossible for me to ride. We have discovered how to improve the grip, which is something positive, but now we need a more balanced bike to avoid overuse of the forearms."

Source: AsparTeam

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