West finds feeling and confidence, Sucipto improves by more than 1.6 seconds QMMF Racing Team rider Anthony West and Rafid Topan Sucipto had a successful qualifying practice at the Grand Prix of San Marino and are both aiming high in the Moto2 race on Sunday. West, who had struggled with a lack of front end feeling with his Speed Up prototype on day one, was back in fighting mode after his technicians tried another change with the geometry of his bike and increased the wheelbase in order to give him the feedback from the front that he was looking for. With this new setup, the 32-year-old Australian was able to speed up significantly and to secure 19th place on the starting grid, with a gap of only 1.5 seconds to Spaniard Pol Espargaró on pole position. West is now determined to battle for points in the race and to at least get close to the desired top ten position. Young team-mate Rafid Topan Sucipto also managed to improve both his riding and the set-up of his bike, scraping more than 1.6 seconds off his Firday time. With a new personal best of 1.41,096 seconds, the Indonesian teenager cut the gap to Espargaró to only 3.4 seconds. His goal for the race is to battle within the group of riders that did similar lap times in practice and to get another race finish under his belt. Anthony West ? 19th in 1.39,176 ?Today was the first time in many races that the bike felt like a proper race bike. Before, I had no feeling with the bike and I lost a lot of confidence in myself, because no matter what we did, I couldn?t ride the bike, I couldn?t turn it and there was no way for me to go fast. I felt like I didn?t want to ride any more, because I didn?t want to be in this position and I didn?t know how to change the situation we were in. But the change we made this morning was an important step to get us back on track. We are still far away from the position in which I want to be, but at least we got some feeling out of the front, which is a good start. Hopefully we can improve from this point on. In the race tomorrow, I hope for some points, but I won?t be really happy unless I am within the top ten!? Rafid Topan Sucipto ? 33rd in 1.41,096 ?We continued to improve today which I am very happy about. We managed to fix the issues I had with the feeling for the bike and I also readjusted some of my braking points. Now I am able to brake harder and deeper into the corners, which helped me a lot to get better lap times. I want to push harder again in the race and hopefully put up a fight with the others around me!?
Posted on: Sat, 14 Sep 2013 19:41:49 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015