Xavier Simeon is looking to make final tweaks to his set-up if he is to challenge for a strong qualifying position at the Commercialbank Grand Prix of Qatar later this afternoon.
On Friday, the RTL Sport rider finished with a best time of 2:04.195 putting him in 26th place. Faced with development problems, the Belgian will be working with his Tech 3 team to change the bike with the qualifying session taking place at 15:55 GMT.
Speaking on Thursday night, Simeon spoke of the issues facing him out on track.
“It’s hard!” he said. “There is a lack of balance during braking and the bike does not behave as it should in the turns, it turns hard. We must find solutions to these problems”.
But after a lengthy debrief, the engineers and mechanics had worked hard with Xavier to make the desired changes to the Tech 3 Mistral 610.
And by the middle of Friday's third practice session, this work has reaped rewards, with Xavier Simeon making a big improvement on his Thursday best.
“We’re moving in the right direction,” said Xavier in Friday night. “We must continue to make progress. We can still improve in agility, my riding position can be refined. It is the sum of small improvements that will find the precious tenths we need”.
In Friday's third free practice session, German Stefan Bradl topped the timesheets with a best time of 2:00.882, putting him comfortably clear of Marc Marquez, Andrea Iannone, Thursday pacesetter Yuki Takahashi and Julian Simon.
