Rizla Suzuki‘s Ãlvaro Bautista will start tomorrows Monster Energy Grand Prix De France in an impressive 12th place. The Spaniard, who is still on the road to full recovery after returning from his broken leg steadily improved lap after lap around the Le Mans circuit, one point even featuring in the top 10.
Bautista set a time of 1:34.513s which was just a second off a front row place, even more impressive when you consider the injury, and also the fact that he did not qualify for the race last year so has limited time under his belt around the circuit.
“I am happy with the work we have done today.” he said.
“This morning we tried a new setting in the bike because yesterday we needed more rear grip when we entered the corners and today we tried to make the bike shorter to help with this. It was the right thing to do because suddenly it felt much better, but the change was made on the old frame, so this afternoon we put the same setting in the new chassis and the improvement was even better. My rhythm was between mid 1'34 and 1'35 all the time and this was easy to do.”
He continued. “At the end of qualifying I tried to follow some other guys, but I made some mistakes on my best lap – so I think I can certainly improve on that. We have done a good job today and I am happy with the whole team because they are helping me so much to get the confidence in the bike. If we continue in this way I think we will be at the top of our performance very soon!”
