Ãlvaro Bautista was happy with how his Friday programme unfolded despite the changing weather conditions and feels confident for race day.
The Rizla Suzuki rider was ninth fastest in the dry morning session before going 11th in the damp conditions that the MotoGP class were faced with in the afternoon after rain had fallen in the preceding 125cc practice session.
Bautista revealed that he felt instantly comfortable on board the GSV-R machine and was happy with the set-up of the bike, even when the rain began to fall.
“Today has been a good day to test in the wet and the dry” he said. “I felt very good right from the beginning of this morning's session and tried a different setting in one of the bikes, but it didn't quite work so we went back to the other bike to try and get less movement in the bumps. We decided that this afternoon we would start with the standard setting, but it started to rain so we began the session with what we had in the wet warm-up in Barcelona, because there I had good grip and feeling.”
Bautista was running well in the afternoon but later revealed that he was forced to stop after running out of fuel, citing that as the reason for his fall down the leaderboard.
“This was the first time I have ridden here in the wet and step-by-step I was getting more confident as the time progressed. Each lap my time was improving by about half-of-a-second or more, but at the end – as the track started to get quicker – I had to stop because I didn't have enough fuel, so I lost a few positions. This doesn't matter though because I am happy and during the practice I was always in fifth or sixth position and I know we have a good wet set-up. We will have to see what the weather will do for the rest of the weekend and I think we are well prepared for any type of conditions.”
Team Manager Paul Denning urged the need for caution and warned that very few conclusions can be drawn from today's lap times, especially with the weather forecast looking mixed for the rest of the weekend.
“Despite the weather's best efforts it hasn't been a bad day here at the new-look Silverstone. The dry practice this morning was cold and the grip levels were down, but the bike seemed to perform quite well and Ãlvaro got good feedback. This allowed him to be reasonably competitive and get a good starting point for the weekend.”
“The wet performance was very encouraging, he was consistently in the top five or six, but unfortunately we had to bring the GSV-R in for fuel with only a couple of minutes of the session remaining. This meant he lost the opportunity to better his time when the track was obviously getting a lot faster right at the end. The position today really isn't important and we've made a solid start to the weekend and if it's wet or dry we're all looking forward to tomorrow.”
