MAPFRE Team Mahindra rider, Bagnaia kicks off Misano weekend with 11th fastest time on Day One

David Bodapati September 12, 2015

363 2 minutes read

The San Marino Grand Prix kicked off this morning at the Misano World Circuit Marco Simoncelli in spectacular conditions, and even though the track surface has been relaid since the last visit here t

Pecco Bagnaia 11th fastest in first FP in the the Moto3 on Friday. A Aspar Mapfre Mahindra team image

here were several crashes for the Moto3 riders in the opening session. Local favourite Enea Bastianini set the pace this morning and the day looked set to be dominated by home riders until series leader Danny Kent produced a late afternoon effort that sealed stop spot by just 0.036 seconds from Bastianini and 0.074 from Romano Fenati.

Meanwhile, Movistar Yamaha MotoGP’s Jorge Lorenzo rode the quickest ever lap around the Misano World Circuit Marco Simoncelli to lead a closely contested opening day of practice at the San Marino and Rimini Grand Prix.

In this afternoon’s Free Practice 2 session, Lorenzo set a 1’32.871 to finish the day fastest ahead of the Repsol Honda duo of Marc Marquez (1’32.924) and Dani Pedrosa (1’33.258) who were second and third quickest respectively. Overall, the combination of the new Misano asphalt and 2015-specification Bridgestone MotoGP tyres resulted in some extremely quick lap times, with the top 12 riders on the timesheets today able to set times quicker than the existing Misano Circuit Record Lap time of 1’32.915.

In Moto3 MAPFRE Team Mahindra rider Pecco Bagnaia is one of the Italian riders looking for success this weekend and although he had the setback of a gearbox problem this morning he was competitive from the first lap of the second session this afternoon. The youngster is looking for more front-end performance tomorrow but he is confident after setting the eleventh fastest lap of the day on his fourteenth and final effort. Jorge Martín was twentieth after running into traffic and and Juanfran Guevara was twenty-first after an early crash.

Francesco `Pecco’ Bagnaia clocked 11th fastest time at 1.44.084 and finished 25 laps. He said: “It was important to us to be inside the top ten today. We were quite fast but struggled to maintain a consistent pace. I set a good lap on my last lap and I was riding alone but we have to improve our pace tomorrow. We also need to improve the response from the front end because I am struggling to get into the turns on the brakes, the bike tends to fold and didn’t give me the feeling I was hoping for today. The mechanics worked hard all day to give me the best possible bike but it was a shame we lost time because of a problem with the gearbox. We could have done with six or seven more laps but I am happy, we are working well and we’re on the right lines.”

Teammate Jorge Martin struggled and was 20th in 1.44.584. He did 34 laps. He said: “We struggled to find a feeling this morning because there wasn’t much grip out there but then it got better and the second session went quite well. Once we had the set-up more or less in hand we tried to push for a lap but I got held up by another rider and couldn’t go any faster. Anyway, we have come here with a good base set-up and in general I am happy although we could do with finding some more front-end confidence tomorrow. We will try to improve our pace in the final free practice then push hard for a fast lap in qualifying.”

eom/Mapfre Mahindra press release