MISANO ADRIATICO, Italy: On a wet and slippery Misano World Circuit, QMMF Racing Team riders Anthony West and Roman Ramos settled for 17th and 33rd spots respectively on the first day of practice for the San Marino Grand Prix.
Rain king West, who stormed to the top of the time sheets for a short while, ended the first session with a crash in treacherous conditions.
For the afternoon, he and his crew made some set-up changes that didn’t have the desired effect and West couldn’t improve his lap time.
Ramos made good use of the first session to learn the best line around the 4.2 kilometre track and ran into technical difficulties in the afternoon.
Unable to do a flying lap, he also got stuck with his previous best time.
Since better weather and dry conditions are expected for the remainder of the weekend, the lap times in rainy weather will not have a lot of significance.
“I had a good feeling with the bike and it felt easy,” said West.
“I was going faster and faster every lap, until I made a small mistake towards the end. We needed to change the setting on the bike, but I didn’t want to stop, I wanted to keep going and make laps. I then braked a little bit later than the laps before, with the bike not really set up a hundred percent. I finally crashed, which was my fault,” he explained.
“My confidence in the bike was really good. There were just some small things that I wanted to change to go faster in the afternoon. We made these changes, but maybe we went too far and made too many changes at the same time,” he added.
“All of them together made the bike jump too much away from what we wanted. I had problems pushing the front and we went too soft with the rear suspension, which was bottoming out and working the rear tyre too hard. It was impossible to go faster with this set-up.”
Ramos who ended 33rd hoped for better performance for grid.
“I ran into a problem with the quickshifter that didn’t work properly. I couldn’t do a single flying lap in the second session and the bike eventually stopped on the back straight,” he said.
“The good thing for tomorrow is that I know the track now, which I will try to use to my advantage when the conditions improve.”THE PENINSULA
