Moto3: Battered Bastianini tops first day

A battered and bruised Enea Bastianini has topped the first day of Moto3 action at the final race of the 2016 season, bouncing back both form a vertebrae injury sustained in Australia two races ago and from a punishing crash this morning to end the day on top.

The Gresini Honda rider sneaked in a fast lap right at the end of the day to top the session, taking the top spot away from Juanfran Guevara and Joan Mir by only 0.099.

“I feel good physically: sensations are good and I can ride how I want. This morning, however, I needed a bit of time to regain the right feeling and I was not particularly loose on the bike. In fact, I also had a minor crash in the final stages of the first session. It was not a very encouraging start, but the guys in the team helped me to stay focused ahead of FP2.

“In the afternoon we started from scratch and I immediately felt better; also the bike has improved, especially on the front. In the end we also tried the soft tyre, making some other changes on the set-up, and we set a good lap time. Tomorrow we will still continue to work especially with the harder tyre, looking for a progress on race pace and checking in particular the behaviour of the bike with old tires, something that is making us struggle a bit at the moment.”

Champion Brad Binder led the provisional second row ahead of Philipp Oettl and Jorge Navarro, while Fabio Quartararo, Jorge Martin, Jakub Kornfeil and Gabriel Rodrigo rounded out the top ten.