At the end of the second session, the Italian rider had posted a promising seventh-best time, steadily improving his feeling with the bike. Tomorrow he’ll try to continue in this direction.The American rider, on the other hand, was slowed by a lack of rear grip in corners, and he finished with the fourteenth-best time.
Valentino Rossi:
“Today we started better than we had at recent races. Although I’m seventh, our time isn’t bad, and Spies and Dovizioso are ahead but close. This is positive, but the really important thing will be whether we can continue improving like this tomorrow as well, cutting more tenths from my time, session by session. Today I went pretty well on the second part of the track, while I lost time in T1 and T2, so we have to try to work on those sections. We had a hard time at the start of this afternoon’s session, because the hard tyre, which we thought we could work well for the race, was really sliding a lot. When we put on the soft, the situation improved, also because we made some additional changes with the front that helped us improve the feeling. We hope to be able to do the race with the soft, and tomorrow we’ll try to do enough laps to verify that as well.”
Nicky Hayden:
“It was a frustrating day, really. You have two weeks off, and you work hard and do all the little things that will help you when you come back. Then to have your first day back be probably your worst day of the year is pretty frustrating. The main thing is I don’t have much grip from the rear, even on corner entry, and I’m spinning a lot on exit. There are a lot of long, fast corners here, and if you’re slow there, you lose time. We tried a couple things to improve certain areas, but really we didn’t find a big step forward. It was a pretty difficult day for me. I’m not happy with my performance, or with anything, so hopefully we can put this behind us tomorrow.”
Ducati Team press release
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