The first of the two Rounds at Aragon, a technical track in southern Spain, was spectacular, hot but not too hot ... and this made racing possible while putting tires to the test.
Our guys are back to being protagonists with Chaz Davies who fought for the victory in race1 and race2 and was close to the podium in the Superpole Race, and Federico Caricasulo who continues his apprenticeship that leads him more and more frequently to the top ten.
Some difficulties, however, for Marco Melandri, struggling with a bike still difficult for him, also because of the lack of pre-season tests. We expect a champion reaction from him!
As for the world championship: shame to those who move from Aragon!Next week we still race here.
We are not asking you to come in person, after all you cannot ... but just to follow us on tv. Will you be on our side?
CHAZ DAVIES RACE1: 2nd
"It is clear that the starting position did not help me, but I got off a good start, and in the first laps, I managed to keep a good pace to recover positions. The feeling was positive, and I closed the gap between the leading group and me. I tried to manage the tires then when I saw that Scott and Rea were gaining advantage I pushed to the maximum. I think if I had one more lap, I could have overtaken Scott, but he was still very good at defending himself without allowing me to attack him."
FEDERICO CARICASULO RACE1: 9th
"Today was quite a positive day. Thanks to all the work we did yesterday after the FP2, we managed to greatly improve the bike. Unfortunately, my qualifying was not good due to a strategy error and we started from the back, but race 1 was strong, we managed to keep a good pace and were consistently faster than in practice. We will keep this as a base to improve upon tomorrow."
MARCO MELANDRI RACE1: 14th
"Especially in the first part of the race I was not able to ride as I would have liked, I went wide on a couple of turners because I found problems in braking and cornering. For tomorrow let's change direction completely and try to understand what can be a good road to improve."
CHAZ DAVIES RACE2: 2nd
"I'm very happy with the way things went this weekend. It is clear that the first place has another value but I am really satisfied with the work done by the team that put me in a position to be competitive since Friday. Unfortunately, the start was not the best and in the first laps, I had to fight with the group. Then I was able to lap with a good race pace and to fight with Jonny (Rea) until the last corner. We will get back on track with solid foundations next week end."
FEDERICO CARICASULO RACE2: 13th
"Today was a positive day because we constantly diminished our gap from the winner and improved our race pace. We collected a lot of data especially in race 2, which will be very useful for us to improve next weekend. Overall, I am happy with the work we did, and we will try to do our best these days to be even better prepared next weekend."
