Trackhouse ahead of everyone
After the Spanish Grand Prix, with Ai Ogura in 5th place and Raul Fernandez in 6th (characterized by the Japanese rider’s last-lap overtake on his teammate), the duo of the team Trackhouse returned to the track in Jerez de la Frontera for the post-race test session. An event that proved particularly positive and encouraging for Aprilia’s satellite team, as demonstrated by the combined timesheets: Ogura finished at the top after 71 laps, followed by Fernandez by just 5 thousandths, with the Spaniard completing two fewer laps.
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Everything went right
Both riders focused on electronics, chassis setup, suspension adjustments, and new aerodynamic components brought by the team, in addition to tire evaluation: “Today we worked mainly on the medium tire and we weren’t trying to do a real time attack, but in the end, we went out with a soft rear tire to see how it behaved after the work done during the day – commented Ogura – I’m happy with the test, we did everything we had planned in advance: no crashes, no major problems, so overall it went well. In just one day it’s difficult to make a great step forward, but to understand some important things for the next races it was very useful. It was a good test.”
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Overall positive feelings that were also acknowledged by Fernandez at the end of the test day: “It was a really positive day. I’m happy because I believe that we found something for the time attack, which was the priority yesterday after the race. We had two soft rear tires: with the first, as always, I didn’t feel comfortable with the bike and couldn’t ride it as I wanted. It’s really difficult when you have that feeling, but with the second one, we modified the bike a bit based on the data and it seems to have worked well. I did a 1:35 for the first time at Jerez and also improved by almost three tenths in the second sector, but I was wide. I think maybe we found something that we need to confirm at Le Mans. During the day we worked a lot with the medium tire, we tried some aerodynamic solutions, a new chassis setup, and I really liked all of it. With everything we tried, I was very fast: I did a 1:36.2 two or three times with the medium rear tire because we weren’t just focused on the time attack, but also on working on the bike’s setup and the new developments Aprilia provided us with. I think it was a positive test.”
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