From the Aprilia, we often only remember a few brilliant moves from Aleix Espargaró during testing, or even at the start of the race, before the RS-GP drops back down the rankings. In this first part of the season, the Catalan driver's best result was obtained in the Czech Republic, where he qualified 4th and finished 10th in the race.
De Bradley Smith, called to compensate for the involuntary defection of Andrea Iannone, we hardly speak, the official test pilot of the Noale brand, like Stefan bradl at Honda, doing the best he can for the imperatives of racing with those of MotoGP development.
At the end of an official day of testing on the Misano circuit where Bradley Smith completed twice as many laps as his teammate, the Briton makes an interesting take on the situation…
Bradley Smith : " It's been a long day! I didn't really do a hundred laps, but I did 96, the first on the track and one of the last to leave. We have to do that at the moment, because the performance of the bike is not yet exactly where we want it to be. At GPs I feel more like a test rider than a GP rider, so the main thing was to put everything together and get ready for this weekend. I was happy to run in the 1'32s at the end, and I tried a new chassis whose main objective was to get more handling when entering corners from the bike. As for the engine, we are a little stronger than the Suzuki and Yamaha, but still slower than the KTM, Honda and Ducati. At the moment we have to work on cornering speed rather than engine power. »
« We expect the engine to be more powerful next year, so for now we need to work on something to run a little better. We've hit some milestones, so that's good. »
« We also played with the chassis height system, but we had some issues today, so I was a little disappointed not to be able to try it as this is a circuit where it would be useful. »
Misano Test ranking at 18 p.m.:
Misano Test ranking at 13 p.m.:
Credit ranking: MotoGP.com
