Austin: QMMF Racing Team riders Anthony West and Julian Simon had a fantastic start to the Grand Prix of the Americas.
After taking fourth place on a rain-soaked track in the first free practice session, West repeated his strong performance in sunny and dry conditions in the afternoon, confirming his fourth position in the provisional classification with a gap of less than half a second from Briton Sam Lowes on top of the time sheets.
Spaniard Simon also started with a bang and took fifth spot right behind his Australian team-mate in the morning.
Simon also had no problem with the changing track conditions in the afternoon and took a strong sixth place, just four tenths of a second behind West.
At the end of the day, West said: “I felt pretty good. I was a bit worried this morning in the wet, because I didn’t have a good feeling in the wet during pre-season testing. But now the bike is much better, even though I still lack a little bit of feeling in the front. But it’s coming along. Also in the dry, I felt quite strong in every lap. My best lap time was about the same as last year, but we are much more consistent, I am about one second faster than last year consistently. I had the chance to follow Rabat for a few laps and it was interesting to see that our bike is stronger in some points of the track, but his bike is stronger in others. Tomorrow we will try to make some change to help our bike where he is a little bit faster. But so far so good — I am happy with our position and I want to thank my team for doing a job.”
His team-mate Simon said: “I had a really good start into this Grand Prix. I had a good feeling in the rain and I had a good feeling again when it dried up and the sun came out in the afternoon.”
“I managed to improve my corner speed and there is more to come, because I still lack a little bit of feeling for the front. But we know what we have to do in order to improve tomorrow and I am confident to score a good position on the starting grid. Thanks to the guys in my team, because together, we managed to improve a lot,” he said. For the second day of practice, both riders will try to fine-tune their Speed-Up prototypes further and gain additional front-end feel and additional speed in their fight for good positions on the starting grid.
THE PENINSULA
