The first day of the Argentina GP ended with an almost perfect balance between 21 riders of the MotoGP field, as 21 of 22 riders that will be competing at this weekends’ MotoGP round in Termas de Rio Hondo ended the first two Free Practice sessions separated by just one second! But even though this first day of action in Argentina points to things being balanced on track, the truth is that Andrea Dovizioso (Mission Winnow Ducati) has once again shown he is in top form this season.
If during the Free Practice 1, held during the morning, Marc Marquez dominated operations on track, the improvement on track conditions for the Free Practice 2 session in the afternoon meant that riders could push for the limits, and at this moment Andrea Dovizioso showed he’s a bit ahead of his rivals.
After winning the first race of the year in Qatar after a fantastic battle with Marquez, with the final results being homologated just this past week because of the four-team protest against Ducati’s rear tire “spoiler”, Dovizioso secured the fastest lap from Day 1 in Argentina by lapping the Termas de Rio Hondo circuit in 1m39.181s, enough to keep Jack Miller (Pramac Ducati) in second, with only 0.009s between the two!
Third fastest was Maverick Viñales (Monster Energy Yamaha), who after disappointing in Qatar, arrives in Argentina hoping to catch up with the MotoGP leaders and get the win on Sunday’s race.
As for Hafizh Syahrin, the Red Bull KTM Tech3 rider improved by a massive 2 seconds from the first to the second Free Practice session.
The Malaysian rider is starting to understand how to make the KTM RC16 bike work, and even if the position at the timesheets isn’t impressive (22nd), the truth is that Syahrin is now getting more and more comfortable with the bike, and on the next track sessions we should see him improving even more
“I’m quite surprised. In the morning I didn’t have a good feeling with the bike, it was similar to Qatar. Later we did just very small changes, but we found really decent grip on the rear compared to this morning. I couldn’t use the potential of the soft tires, because I couldn’t truly find out where the limit is. But finally, I feel really good with the bike and we can fight closer to the others as I nearly improved by two seconds this afternoon. We believe that we can improve more tomorrow. Now I start to understand how we have to work, we need another step to get closer”, says Hafizh Syahrin after the end of the second Free Practice session of MotoGP.
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