Bautista and Abraham confirm good progress on second day

The second day of testing in Qatar saw Maverick Viñales return to the top of the preseason timesheets, beating  Andrea Dovizioso's best from yesterday by almost four tenths to hold off his team-mate Valentino Rossi. Rookie rider Jonas Folger continued to impress with the third fastest time, as the only other man to beat the 1'55 barrier. Cal Crutchlow, Aleix Espargaró and Marc Márquez rounded out the top six, followed by three Ducatis in the shape of Pull&Bear Aspar rider Álvaro Bautista, Jorge Lorenzo and Scott Redding. Tomorrow represents the final opportunity for the MotoGP teams and riders to test before the season starts here in Qatar on 26^th March.
Pull&Bear Aspar riders Álvaro Bautista and Karel Abraham confirmed their good impressions from yesterday with another positive performance, the Spaniard finding half a second off his best lap almost immediately, although his plans were set back slightly by a small crash. Once he returned to the track Bautista continued to work on improving stability and turning, with the aim to complete a race simulation tomorrow. Karel Abraham banked a race simulation today, racking up almost twenty laps in fast and consistent times. The Czech rider also clocked his fastest lap of the evening when riding along at the end of the session, which secured eleventh place overall.

7^th Álvaro Bautista 1:55.245 (48 laps): “Today we made some more detailed changes after finding a decent base to start from yesterday. These small modifications allowed me to focus more on my riding and getting references because the bikes wasn't changing much between runs. We focused on our race pace on used rubber and tried a few alterations to find more stability. In Australia we found something that we might have confirmed here but we have to keep working on stability and on turning. The place I am struggling most is on the gas in corner exit. Anyway, we have taken a step forward in confidence and feeling. Let's see if we can improve the set-up tomorrow and complete a race run of twenty laps on used rubber.”
11^th Karel Abraham 1:55.420 (46 laps): “We are happy because we have done a satisfactory race simulation, I was able to set some fast and consistent laps. At the start of the day we tried some small modifications to the electronics and the chassis. On my last exit we put some new tyres in but, like yesterday, I wasn't able to follow anybody so I rode alone and even so I was able to improve my best time from yesterday by two tenths. I had a little crash at the end of the day but the bike and me were fine.”