The first day of practice for the 250cc class got underway today and Yuki Takahashi was able to find a good setting and get more feedback for tomorrow’s crucial day of qualifying which decides the grid positions for Sunday’s Grand Prix of Spain. After finding the correct carburettor settings for his Honda RS250RW, Yuki tried hard in the last important laps of the afternoon to make a good lap time. Unfortunately the JiR Team Scot rider found some slower riders in front of him just as he aimed to make his best lap. The traffic meant that he was unable to end the session further up the on the time sheets.
Gianni Berti – Technical Coordinator, JiR Team Scot
“We’re satisfied at today’s result even if lap time recorded doesn’t show the real value of Yuki Takahashi! We worked hard on the carburettor settings, which are now perfect. We’ve been working on set-up with the transmission and gearing, but we still have to work on getting the optimum setting. Unfortunately in the last minutes when we were looking for the best lap Yuki found traffic in his way and that meant it was not possible to be any nearer the front. We’re confident, as tomorrow I’m sure we will finally get to show our potential.”
Yuki Takahashi – Rider, JiR Team Scot 250GP
“I’m sorry because I didn’t manage to move further up the rankings in the last few minutes of practice thanks to the traffic I encountered in the last two laps. This meant I wasn’t able to do the lap time I was looking for. In any case I’m still pretty confident that tomorrow I can do better and we can improve as our pace for the race is pretty good and the package is close to perfect. The only things to improve are our choice of tyres and then fine-tune our suspension settings, which we did some work on today. I have some problems with the bike sliding a little, but that’s something we can fix for tomorrow.”
Yutaka Hirano – Chief Technician, JiR Team Scot
“I want to say that we did a good job today in preparation for tomorrow’s qualifying session. During the morning we began making our choice on rear tyres and by the afternoon we definitely found a good one. This was good, as by this time the temperatures were similar to what we will be expecting for Sunday’s race. More than this, we also did a good job on the chassis settings as we approach the final day of practice tomorrow. Overall, our technical package that Yuki has is good, and also his mental approach is strong. The only thing we have to look for is to be a little faster in some parts of the track, but we will do this.”
Grand Prix of Qatar Spain – First practice
1. Mika Kallio - KTM - 1’43”111
2. Alex Debon - Aprilia - 1’43”321
3. Julian Simon - KTM - 1’43”830
4. Hiroshi Aoyama - KTM - 1’43”877
5. Thomas Luthi - Aprilia - 1’44”002
10. Yuki Takahashi - Honda - 1’44”385
