Photo: motogp.com
Weather in Holland remains as unpredictable as it gets, and slight drizzle showed up at the MotoGP circuit in Assen this morning, causing a rather weak Free Practice 3, with several riders preferring to sit out and enjoy whatever progress they had made in FP1 and FP2 on Thursday. With his 1’33.653 in FP2, Aleix Espargaro remains the fastest rider ahead of the Dutch GP, after having put in only three laps this morning.
While yesterday in Free Practice 2 all the riders have improved their times, it was not the case today. Marc Marquez, Dani Pedrosa, Jorge Lorenzo and Danilo Petrucci preferred to play the safe card and have not tried to push hard today, preferring to watch the rest of the pack from their pit chairs. The highest number of laps was recorded by Alvaro Bautista, who struggled to get through directly to Q2, but was 0.003 seconds slower the 10th placed than Andrea Dovizioso, himself only 3 thousandths of a second behind LCR’s Stefan Bradl.
The riders who got straight into Q2 are Aleix Espargaro, Marquez, Pedrosa, Lorenzo, Iannone, Smith, Rossi, Pol Epsargaro, Bradl and Dovizioso. The Qualifying 1 session is scheduled in some 2 and a half hours’ time, and in case Thor, the god of thunders remains as undecided, the two Q’s will be a most interesting form of entertainment.
Finally, it looks like Lucio Cechinello got a new sponsor for his LCR Honda team, CWM World, and Bradl’s livery was changed accordingly. It looks like this may be the beginning of LCR’s road to a 2-bike grid presence, one of Cecchinello’s big dreams. However, in the absence of solid financing adding a second LCR to the field was impossible… until now.
He however told motomatters that the discussions are in a very early stage, and he’s not willing to promise anything he can’t deliver. That is, because Honda’s Nakamoto seems not that eager to add more RCV1000R to the grid, and he told Cecchinello that the manufacturing costs for a production racer are almost as big as those of a satellite bike. That leaves Cecchinello with the option to get RC213V satellite machinery with a higher price, even though this could lead to better results.
With CWM backing him now, we might expect to see two LCR bikes on the grid, even though Lucio Cecchinello says we should not jump to conclusions and speak about a second machine for 2015 with any degree of certainty.
The riders who got straight into Q2 are Aleix Espargaro, Marquez, Pedrosa, Lorenzo, Iannone, Smith, Rossi, Pol Epsargaro, Bradl and Dovizioso. The Qualifying 1 session is scheduled in some 2 and a half hours’ time, and in case Thor, the god of thunders remains as undecided, the two Q’s will be a most interesting form of entertainment.
Finally, it looks like Lucio Cechinello got a new sponsor for his LCR Honda team, CWM World, and Bradl’s livery was changed accordingly. It looks like this may be the beginning of LCR’s road to a 2-bike grid presence, one of Cecchinello’s big dreams. However, in the absence of solid financing adding a second LCR to the field was impossible… until now.
He however told motomatters that the discussions are in a very early stage, and he’s not willing to promise anything he can’t deliver. That is, because Honda’s Nakamoto seems not that eager to add more RCV1000R to the grid, and he told Cecchinello that the manufacturing costs for a production racer are almost as big as those of a satellite bike. That leaves Cecchinello with the option to get RC213V satellite machinery with a higher price, even though this could lead to better results.
With CWM backing him now, we might expect to see two LCR bikes on the grid, even though Lucio Cecchinello says we should not jump to conclusions and speak about a second machine for 2015 with any degree of certainty.
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