Bastianini to start Silverstone showdown from third row. Locatelli 20th

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Enea Bastianini will start tomorrow’s British Grand Prix at the historic Silverstone Circuit from the third row of the grid: after struggling yesterday, the young Gresini Racing Team Moto3 racer set the seventh fastest time during today’s Qualifying session, solving part of the set-up issues experienced during practice.

Bastianini will thus start the race ready to fight with his Championship rival, Danny Kent, which will start tomorrow from the front row of the grid with the third fastest time. To try to beat the Briton, Enea together with the team will try to further improve the beahaviour of his Honda making the most of tomorrow morning’s Warm Up, especially to try to reduce the vibrations encountered today in Qualifying.

Bastianini’s team mate, Andrea Locatelli, will instead line up his bike on the seventh row with the 20th time: the 18-year-old rider from Selvino was slowed by traffic is in his first attempt and also in the final stages while he was trying to improve his 2’14”498, which remained unchanged. Locatelli, who is happy with the feeling reached with the bike, will aim to make a good start tomorrow to try recover immediately some positions.

ENEA BASTIANINI (7th – 2’13″525)
“Overall I’m pretty happy because we have improved our performance in the centre of the corner: so far during all practice sessions the bike tended to go wide, but now I am much more at ease. However, we still have some vibration problems: I feel a lot the bumps on the track, so we need to work some more on this issue. We know that today in Qualifying we could have achieved more, so I’m not worried about the gap from the pole position time; if we can make another improvement I think we can fight with Kent tomorrow, but to be able to stay with him we will have to be almost perfect, because he has a good rhythm”.

ANDREA LOCATELLI (20th – 2’14″498)
“During my first flying lap, at the beginning of the session, I found myself in a group of riders who was pushing hard, but at some point they slowed down, forcing me to do the same… The same thing actually happened also on my last attempt, so it was not possible to get more. Anyway I’m confident because we have solved the problems we had yesterday, with the bike which was going wide on the fast corners. Session after session, I regained the confidence that I was missing for some races and now I can push hard, so tomorrow will be important to make a good start to recover immediately positions and have a good race”.

FAUSTO GRESINI
“We could get more in today’s Qualifying. However, Enea is not worried so much for the lap time obtained today, but for the vibration problems that still are slowing him down: our priority is therefore to try to solve this issue before the race, in order to help him to fight. Locatelli has perhaps made a mistake not pushing until the end of his flying lap despite the traffic: starting from the twentieth position is certainly not an exciting prospect, but Andrea is confident for tomorrow, so we hope he can be strong at the start and in the early laps to try to stay close to the fastest”.