Rookies Remy Gardner and Raul Fernandez set off for the first time on a MotoGP bike at Sachsenring, a place where they both have good records in lower categories. Coming from a positive weekend at the Catalunya Grand Prix followed by a test day, both were looking to continue their good form for the first day of the Motorrad Grand Prix Deutschland.
During Free Practice 1, Australian Remy Gardner was looking to take the positives which came out from the test day in Barcelona and develop them on a race weekend. This morning, he rode in 1’22.598, a best lap time obtained at the end of his first run, in new tyres. In the afternoon, he continued to push and times went down as the track got hotter. Remy managed to take his lap time down by 1.295, which placed him twenty-second in the combined standings. Tomorrow, he will continue to push in order to get a good grid position on qualifying day.
His teammate Raul Fernandez had in mind to try a different setting on the whole weekend after some positive information came out of the test day in Catalunya. In the morning, he got his best lap time in 1’22.807 and took it down to 1’21.820 in the afternoon session. He finished the first day of the German Grand Prix in P24 and will be looking to continue his efforts on Saturday, when the action resumes with FP3 at 9:55 local time (GMT+2), followed by FP4 and the qualifying sessions.
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Remy Gardner
Position: 22nd
Time: 1'21.303
Laps: 42
"I expected a bit more from today to be honest but it has not been a bad day overall. We are close to the factory riders, which is important. We will see what we can do tomorrow and hopefully improve a bit."
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Raul Fernandez
Position: 24th
Time: 1'21.820
Laps: 41
"The day was good, especially during the Free Practice 2. I did not get a good lap time, but this weekend, we are trying a different setting that we worked on during the test in Catalunya, so we will see how it works on the weekend's duration. I think that it was a rather positive day, so we will continue our efforts tomorrow."
