With no rest the Team GO&FUN Honda Gresini and riders moved directly from Japan to Australia this week for the Australian Grand Prix at Phillip Island on Sunday. The second of the triple-header races will see Alvaro Bautista and Scott Redding looking to take the fight to their rivals in the final rounds as the championship heads into its final three races.

Alvaro Bautista, tenth last Sunday in Japan, is still looking for a solution to the rear grip issues that are slowing him down: the Spaniard, who crossed the finish line last year in fifth, going very close to the podium, is currently eleventh in the Championship standings with 79 points, and he’s aiming to take a good result on a track that saw him win back in 2006, in the 125cc class.

His teammate, Scott Redding, ended at Motegi a series of twelve consecutive points scoring finishes: the English rookie, who struggled under braking in the early stages of the race, was in fact only 16th in Japan. Anyway, Scott still maintains his leadership among the riders aboard the Open Class Honda RCV1000R, with 60 points.

ALVARO BAUTISTA

“At Phillip Island we are going to race on a very different track compared to Motegi, with a lot of fast corners where you need a very stable bike. Unfortunately, if we continue to struggle with rear grip, it will be very hard to be fast on that kind of corners, because you need a lot of feeling to do it, and at the moment I can’t really feel the rear tyre. Two important aspects of this race will be he weather, as usually it rains in this period, and the tyres: after the problems we had in 2013, we will need to evaluate in the best possible way the behaviour of the new compounds avaiable this year. Obviously, we will keep working to try to fix the rear grip issues, otherwise it will be very hard to make better results compared to Motegi”.


SCOTT REDDING

“Normally Phillip Island is one of my favourite tracks: it’s fast and I think that it will be funny to ride there with a MotoGP bike. We have to see when we get there how the bike is acting because usually there is a lot of wind there, so it’s going to be difficult. At Motegi I had some problems to stop the bike under braking, and this was worst at the beginning of the race, with the full tank: we still don’t know why, therefore we need to try and find a solution for this Grand Prix”.

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