The typical Le Mans weather played a major role in today’s opening proceedings of the French Grand Prix. Following a mixed first session of the weekend, the MotoGP World Championship field faced a dry, but still fresh FP2 this afternoon.
Tech3 KTM Factory Racing’s Iker Lecuona had a decent feeling straight out of the box. Even in the tricky conditions this morning, he was right in the mix, finishing the first session in P17 and found a good feeling in the dry as well. He concluded day one in a fine P15, missing out on the top 10 by just 0.329 seconds. At the same time, the team’s newcomer Danilo Petrucci struggled to find his usual top form at one of his favorite tracks, but seeks to improve his feeling aboard the KTM RC16 in FP3 tomorrow at 9.55 local time.
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Iker Lecuona
Position: 15th
Time: 1:33.040
Laps: 38
“I’m quite happy about today. I’m not in the top positions, but finally in the wet conditions, I could work with the soft tyre this morning. I felt strong and lap by lap I understood the tyres better and better, which is important for me. Overall, I was quite satisfied this morning.”
“Also, this afternoon I was working alone, didn’t follow anybody, but still felt really good. I improved a lot, we changed something with the base of the bike. The team worked very well, I feel confident with the RC16. Eventually, we finished in P15, so we are optimistic for tomorrow.”
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Danilo Petrucci
Position: 22nd
Time: 1:34.520
Laps: 31
“It has been a very tough day. We tried something very different after what we learned during the test in Jerez, but finally, it didn’t work the way we wanted to. We’re not having an easy time. For me, it’s really tricky to stop the bike at the moment. I thought it was our strong point, but at the moment, it’s hard.”
“For sure, we need to change the setup for tomorrow. We are quite far off and it was difficult for me to be consistent and to do a decent lap time throughout today. Hopefully the weather will be better on Saturday and obviously, I’ll try to go faster.”
