Rain Dominates Proceedings on Saturday in Motegi

“Obviously, I’m disappointed with the result in Qualifying today. I think we showed a good pace in the rain. First of all, I chose the wrong front tyre for this session. I saw the amount of water and though the soft front tyre would be ok, but it was too weak in the braking. But anyhow, I was able to make a good lap, which would put me in a good position on the grid, that I would have been quite happy with. But the yellow flags were out, I didn’t understand the rule that the whole lap got cancelled. I slowed down in the sector to make sure I didn’t better that sector, but unfortunately, the whole lap got cancelled. I continued my lap and made not a bad lap time. I had four yellow flags in the session, so every lap that I did was cancelled essentially, so I was obviously disappointed to be in the back row of the grid for tomorrow’s race. But the team did a good job today, I’m pleased with the performance of the bike. We can definitely improve. Overall, I’m happy enough. We just need to get a good start tomorrow and see what we can do for the race.”

“Today has been a really tricky day with FP2 this morning in full wet and unfortunately, due to the heavy rain, they cancelled FP3, so we went directly into Q1. I honestly, really struggled. I did only three laps and on the fourth lap I had a small crash. I managed to get the bike going and come back to the box to get out again, but I could get in only one more timed lap at the end and never improved. I’m a bit disappointed, I expected a lot more after FP2 this morning. I didn’t feel too bad in the rain, but in Qualifying I seemed to struggle a bit more, I think it could have been because there was more water on track than this morning. I’m not entirely happy, especially after I had a strong day yesterday in the dry and I wanted to at least try to get a good grid position for tomorrow, as it’s expected to be dry. Anyway, it is what it is and we just have to do our best in the race tomorrow.”