---
title: "Jones: I just want to race and enjoy"
canonical: "https://readmotorsport.com/2016/10/15/jones-i-just-want-race-enjoy/"
type: "post"
language: "en-GB"
author: "Lewis Duncan"
section: "MotoGP News"
published: "2016-10-15T14:39:12Z"
modified: "2016-10-15T14:39:12Z"
---

# Jones: I just want to race and enjoy

Avintia Racing Ducati’s Mike Jones enjoyed a ‘fantastic’ second day as Hector Barbera’s replacement at the Twin Ring Motegi, qualifying 21st and just over three seconds off the pace.

The Australian was brought in late on Thursday evening to substitute for Barbera, who was called up to replace Andrea Iannone at the factory Ducati team whilst the Italian recovers from a T3 vertebra fracture.

Having never seen the Twin Ring circuit or even ridden a MotoGP bike, aside from a few laps on a MotoGP-derived Desmosedici RR road bike at Phillip Island, Jones put in a very respectable first day on the GP14.2. He ended Friday last, but improved his time from FP1 by over a second and was within the 107% rule.

In FP3 this morning, Jones improved on his best lap once again, this time by a whopping 1.9 seconds and was just over eight tenths of a second down on teammate Loris Baz with a 1m49.071s.

In qualifying, the Australian shaved nearly one and a half a seconds off of his FP3 time and was just over a tenth adrift of Baz in 20th place. To make things just that bit sweeter for him, his 1m47.631s lap put him a tenth ahead of Hiroshi Aoyama on the factory RC213V Honda.

Jones is feeling more and more comfortable on the GP14.2 with each passing session, his Avintia team constantly adapting the bike to suit his riding style and allowing him to exploit more performance from it.

Keeping his feet firmly on the ground, Jones knows that he isn’t going to set the world on fire and is just out to enjoy the experience, learning as he goes. However, he does feel that his pace isn’t too far off what those around him are doing and will definitely seize any opportunity to engage in battle.

“The second day was fantastic, we made a lot of improvements, both with my riding and also with the bike. All of the people involved in Avintia Racing are helping me to adapt to the MotoGP bike, so I made a lot of improvement with my riding to make the bike work, and also they made changes to the bike to suit my riding as well,” said Jones.

“We made up a lot of time and improved the lap times quite significantly, so I’m very happy. It’s all about being steady, moving step by step, and just taking it as it comes and enjoying the experience. But even the lap times are getting a lot better, I don’t want to get too carried away and think of a good result or anything like this. I just want to race and enjoy. It will be what it will be, but of course the better the position, the happier we will be. My lap times are better and I should be in a similar position with the other guys that are just in front of me, and I should be able to learn a lot through the race and gain even more experience.”