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Good, but not great. It may sound a bit cliché, but in the Suzuki camp, the opening qualifiers of the year have seldom met expectations. In fact, at the end of the day yesterday, Alex Rins and Andrea Iannone were in the top five, whereas tomorrow they will start respectively from the sixth and eleventh spot on the grid.
Beginning with the Italian, the day was undoubtedly not one of his best and Andrea tries to understand why. “In the tests I lapped faster and the times came easier – number 29 explains – I think there were more favourable conditions for me. Today I struggled with understeering both in FP4 and in qualifying, with the front end tending to close up when I got to maximum lean angle, something that keeps me from doing a clean line.”
So it’s better to think about the race, in view of which the situation is certainly not one for the bin.
“My pace is not bad. It will be a good, but difficult race, because a lot of riders have a very similar pace to ours, within one tenth. I struggle on the straight; I am well aware that I have a good pace, but I also have some limitations. The closer the conditions get to those of the tests, the more at ease we will be, with lower temperatures and less wind. Otherwise, we tear up the front tyre a lot and quickly and that leads to turning worse and losing in the fast part.”
The tyre issue catalyses Andrea’s attention who does not seem concerned about tomorrow anyway.
“On the rear we don’t have problems. We are happy both with the medium and the soft. On the front, on the other hand, the soft is too soft and the hard is too hard, whereas the medium… is too medium (laughing).”
Moving on to Alex Rins, his mood is definitely better since the Spaniard has done his best qualifiers of the premier class.
“I am happy about how the weekend is playing out. In qualifying, I was able to turn a good lap which placed me in an outstanding situation for tomorrow. For the race, I hope to do a good start and then stay close to the riders ahead of me who are really fast.”
Talking about the tyres, number 42 also seems to have little doubt: “In the various sessions I figured out that the soft compound is the one that feels the best for me and I think it will be the choice for a lot of other riders.”
