POWER ELECTRONICS Aspar riders open Italian GP with contrasting practice sessions

2015-05-29 10:11
Mugello welcomed the MotoGP riders with bright sunshine and temperatures hovering around 25ºC on Friday, as the Italian GP weekend began. It was shown on the opening day that Ducati had done their homework at the exclusive test that took place there recently, as Andrea Dovizioso topped the timesheets in both of the practice sessions held. The Italian rider lapped below the circuit record and close to the best lap ever set at Mugello. His overwhelming dominance served as a warning to his rivals.

Nicky Hayden began this morning with the setup used in France, and managed to take the sixteenth fastest time - 1.3 seconds off the top spot. Unfortunately, in the afternoon he was not so lucky and right at the start a traction control issue forced him to return to the garage. Once the crew had discovered it was just an electronic glitch, the POWER ELECTRONICS Aspar rider was able to get back on track -but could not improve his morning best time.

Eugene Laverty also set his best pace and fastest lap of the day in the morning. The Northern Irishman placed twentieth in the first session, but an afternoon crash on the last corner of the Mugello track prevented him from going higher than twenty-third. Laverty identified the setup of his front forks as the culprit for the crash, and will look to eradicate excessive sliding in tomorrow’s practice sessions.





20th Nicky Hayden 1.49.261 (35 laps): "This morning things went quite well. We started with a setup similar to at Le Mans and the pace was optimal. We found a couple of things that we need to work on, but overall we were happy. However, in the afternoon we suffered some setbacks. After completing the first lap of the afternoon session I had to return to the garage because the control panel of my bike showed a warning that my traction control was disabled. We wasted a lot of time on that, but fortunately it was just a glitch. Upon discovering that, we went back out to confirm that everything was working properly -but this circuit is not easy, we had to redo our work and we didn’t have much time at our disposal. At the end we fitted a new rear tyre to try to improve, as we still had the tyres on from the morning. When we put that tyre on, the front end slid out a lot. The second session was not productive for us, so tomorrow we will go back to what we had this morning."





24th Eugene Laverty 1.49.815 (34 laps): "I’d gone a long time without crashing and now we have had five crashes since Jerez. All of them have been the same, losing the front, so we have to work to improve the setup and get the front wheel to completely stop sliding. I have confidence in the front tyre and I always try to push, so we have to find a setup for the forks that is much more secure in order to prevent crashes. The lap was still very good, with new tyres, but it was a shame about the crash. I accept my part of the responsibility but hopefully we can learn from this fall. The positive thing is that today, after trying different configurations, we have improved the maneuverability of the bike. I always brake very strongly but I was finding it hard to turn the bike in, and today we carried out a change in geometry thanks to which I can now turn much better. It has not been a big change, but this bike is very sensitive, so a small change has given us a lot and now it seems that the bike weighs 20kg less."

Source: AsparTeam

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