It was a sprint race with positive notes for Aprilia Racing at Circuito de Jerez – Ángel Nieto, with Marco Bezzecchi finishing eighth and Lorenzo Savadori, called on to sub for the injured Jorge Martín, crossing the line in nineteenth place.
From Q1, Marco Bezzecchi demonstrated a clear improvement as compared with Friday, earning a spot in Q2 thanks to a good time-attack. After starting from the eleventh spot on the grid, Bezzecchi rode a consistent race, making up a few positions in the early stages and finishing eighth as the first Aprilia over the line.
Lorenzo Savadori, on the other hand, was forced to end his Q1 early due to a bad crash which, luckily, did not result in any physical consequences. In the race, the Italian rider – subbing for Jorge Martín – finished in nineteenth place.
MARCO BEZZECCHI
“We made a small step forward. Fortunately, I managed to go through to Q2 but I wasn’t able to get onto the first two rows, which is always my goal. In the end, I started with the pack, but I had a brilliant start and a great duel in the beginning. Now we need to work on the areas where we know we have room for improvement and we need to stay focused and never give up.”
LORENZO SAVADORI
“We are moving forward with new upgrades on the bike, so we need to get some miles in to allow the engineers to understand what works best and what needs improvement. We have identified a few areas where we need to keep working and analysing the data. In any case, some interesting things have come up. We won’t stop – development continues and we are also trying to make a further step forward because pursuing our work during a race weekend is extremely important, given the fact that the conditions are ideal.”
FABIANO STERLACCHINI
“It was a slightly complicated Saturday, especially conditioned by our position in qualifying. We know that in this MotoGP the qualifying is a truly important element, because we are all extremely close, and starting from the rear often conditions how you’re able to manage the race a bit. The final placement in the sprint race could undoubtedly have been better, but this is an aspect we need to keep working on and where we are already making gradual progress. We’ll obviously need time, but we are optimistic.”
