Tech3 KTM Factory Racing’s Iker Lecuona concluded today’s Qualifying one at the Red Bull Ring in Austria in sixth position. Thereby, he improved his time from last week by 0.316 seconds and missed out on a possible Q2 entry by less than half a second in the ultra-competitive MotoGP field. The Spanish youngster will start the Austrian Grand Prix from the sixth row of the grid.
At the same time, Danilo Petrucci had a consistent FP4 this afternoon and started Qualifying with a fast lap. On his second outing, the Italian struggled to lower his lap time and eventually ended up half a second behind his teammate in ninth, which means he will launch KTM’s second home round from row seven when the red lights turn off at 14:00 local time tomorrow.
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Iker Lecuona
Position: 16th
Time: 1:23.825
Laps: 8
“I’m happy about today, because we improved the race pace a lot compared to last week. We are there with a very similar pace to the official bikes, so I’m pretty satisfied. In my time attack I managed to improve. In FP3 the gap was also very small, I didn’t miss out on the top 10 by much. In Qualifying we had a technical issue on my number one bike, so I had to change. Then I did some small mistakes, because I was a bit nervous, so I couldn’t ride as good as I know I can. But we are there and just wait how the weather will be tomorrow. In any case, I’m ready.”
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Danilo Petrucci
Position: 19th
Time: 1:24.405
Laps: 8
“Always when I try to improve in breaking, I make some mistakes and this is exactly what happened today. I was happy about my feeling in FP4, the pace was pretty good, but when I try to make up some time with the new tyres, we lose on the straight and I always make mistakes as I can’t stop the bike properly. I didn’t expect too much, but I’m definitely not happy with my lap time in Qualifying. Regarding our race pace, I still think we can stick with our target to bring home some points tomorrow.”
