Aprilia Racing Team Gresini’s Stefan Bradl took his best qualifying result of the season with eighth place at Phillip Island, Aprilia’s best since Colin Edwards was seventh in Valencia back in 2003.
The German has been looking strong all weekend in the horrible conditions, ending FP1 on Friday 10th fastest and heading straight through to QP2 after putting his RS-GP eighth on the FP3 time sheets.
Bradl set the initial benchmark time when the second qualifying session got underway earlier today, putting in some quick laps on the intermediate Michelin tyres. With the track beginning to dry even more, Bradl boxed for slicks, though concedes maybe doing so a lap too late.
The German rider returned to track in the final few minutes of the session to improve to a 1m33.015s to eighth fastest, only sixth tenths of a second away from a top six result and just over half a tenth away from Nicky Hayden’s time on the Repsol Honda in seventh.
Looking ahead to the race, the spectacularly awful weather has made Bradl cautious of trying to predict anything, but knows that tomorrow morning’s warm up session will be absolutely vital for dry weather data.
“FP3 went well for us. We were able to do a fast lap with the intermediates at the right time. The conditions were difficult but going straight through to Q2 really helped,” said Bradl.
“In qualifying, I started straight away with the intermediates. We were expecting rain, but then all 15 minutes were on a dry track. So I went back to the garage to put slicks on, maybe a lap too late, but in any case, I was able to improve up to the eighth best time. It is a good position, the best yet for me and for Aprilia, and I am happy about that, but the conditions on these two days have been truly incredible. At the moment, it is impossible to make predictions on the race. If we have a dry day, it will be important to take the best possible advantage of warm up to gather information on the set-up and on which tyre to use.”
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