The Saturday practice, the final free practice session and then the timed qualifiers to determine the starting grid order, concluded the final approach to the first GP of the season for Aprilia Racing Team Gresini. This round marks the Aprilia RS-GP bikes' racing début.

Just like the rest of the weekend in the Qatar desert, the team used this last day of practice as a further step in the development of the fledgling project. In fact, in the final 30 minute free practice session the work on various setups and different electronics strategies took a step forward.

During the first qualifying session valid for deciding the starting grid order, Bautista put his best time of the weekend on the sheets with 1'56,187, whereas Melandri lagged a bit behind with 1'57,934. With these times Alvaro earned a spot on the seventh row and Marco took a place on the ninth for the race tomorrow.


ROMANO ALBESIANO (Aprilia Racing Manager)

"Alvaro's performance is important because we are close to other teams and other bikes that we know are much further along than us in both development and MotoGP experience. This gives us high hopes for growth which is obviously starting completely from scratch. Tomorrow we'll be racing and so the level of sizing ourselves up against our rivals will rise even further. This is an essential element for the direction our development is moving."

FAUSTO GRESINI (Team Manager)

"I'm very pleased with Alvaro's performance. He added his own touch and in the end a positive signal came out which is an encouragement to the entire team. We must never give up and we must have the strength and ability to believe. Now we need to focus on the race. Our first goal will be to finish the race and doing it the best way we can at the moment means giving it our all."

ALVARO BAUTISTA

"My feeling on the bike hasn't changed a lot but we have improved on the electronics front. During the qualifiers I was only able to get two fast laps in, but in any case we were able to improve our times. When I tried to take a bit more of a risk on the flying lap the bike responded well at the front going into turns and I was able to lap fairly fast. We still don't have much information in this area, so we would like to be able to gather more in order to test and achieve that good feeling consistently. For everything else we'll keep working on the electronics and the way the frame performs in turns, particularly going in, as well as trying to find better grip. The race will be difficult tomorrow without and doubt, but we will be looking at it as a test. Our goal is to get to the end with good sensations, trying to maintain as consistent a pace as possible. After a complicated day like yesterday today went better and I want to thank the team for that."

MARCO MELANDRI

"Despite our hard work, even today we didn't gather as much as we had hoped. We need to lap, accumulate information and translate it into the evolution of the bike. Right now I'm not riding to my full potential and I can feel that. The Championship level is incredibly high. As rookies we have a very difficult challenge before us."