My first impressions of the circuit were as I thought, excited! When I walked it I was trying to guess at whether the fast right at the back of the pits would be flat out on the 250 and after doing a few laps I knew that it would be. The circuit was very challenging with all sorts of different corners that make it hard to set-up the bike.
It didn’t take long to get the quick right hander fully flat out however. The first laps I was rolling off slightly plucking up courage and within about 6 laps I was confident enough to take it flat stick!
The gearbox was pretty good for the first session. Aprilia look at the circuit and study the corners to work out what they think would be a close gearbox and then give that information to the teams. I only wanted to change 2nd gear as most of the corners were 2nd gear turns and it was a bit on the tall side but everything else was good. I used the same rear tyre for the whole session as I was just learning the track.
The bike felt generally ok but I couldn’t turn it particularly well in the long series of 4 left handers so I knew we had to work on that. I ended the session in 16th on a 2mins 1.0secs.
For the afternoon we didn’t change too much, just the 2nd gear and a small tweak with the chassis. I learnt more about the circuit in the session and didn’t really put together a ‘qualifying’ lap but I was reasonably happy with the chassis. It was very good in the tight section in Intermediate 4 but in the faster section with the long left hander I was still struggling.
We could improve the bike there very slightly but that meant sacrificing feeling and grip in the 90 degree tighter corners. I did a 2mins 0.3secs which was 18th place.
