Pleasant temperatures of 22ºC greeted the riders in the opening Free Practice session of the weekend. The morning run was interrupted by a red flag just four minutes in, due to oil on the track, but once it was cleared Binder established himself as one of the fastest riders in the class. Only a small electronics problem prevented him from completing the final four minutes of the session, but his 1:43.801 lap was enough to give him fourth on the timesheets. Bendsneyder, in fifteenth, set his fastest lap of 1:44.568 on his final attempt. In the afternoon, with higher track temperatures of around 40ºC, the Red Bull KTM Ajo riders continued working on the setup of their bikes. Brad Binder remained in the top two throughout the session, only running fresh tyres on his last stint. The time that took him to second overall –1:42.974– was clocked on his final lap of the day. Bendsneyder followed the same strategy as his teammate, making three stops, and lowered his lap time from the morning to put in a 1:44.190 –putting him nineteenth. (21st in combined timesheets)
64 BO BENDSNEYDER: “Today was a difficult day, and right from the opening laps we found it hard. FP1 was not bad, but in the second session we went out on used tyres and we had difficulties. Part of the problem with the tyres is the high track temperature -conditions that we haven’t encountered in a while. In any case, we are not worried, we will review the data this afternoon to analyse everything and work hard to improve for tomorrow, because we have the potential to go faster.”
results FP2:
source: motogp.com, ajo.fi
