Laverty: “Suddenly on Saturday we had a big breakthrough”
Eugene Laverty matches his best ever MotoGP™ finish in his first race aboard Ducati machinery at the Qatar GP.
A
major step on Saturday at the Commercial Bank Grand Prix of Qatar saw
Eugene Laverty turn his fortunes around after receiving a new engine.
Even without his injuries, Laverty had struggled during testing but the
new engine saw many of his problems vanish almost immediately. This then
allowed he and the Aspar Team MotoGP to make adjustments on Saturday
and drastically improve his Ducati GP14.2 to see Laverty start 14th.
Improvements continued for Laverty in the race as he battled throughout
with both Jack Miller (Estrella Galicia 0,0 Marc VDS) and Alvaro
Bautista (Aprilia Racing Team Gresini). Their battle was one of the
highlights of the Commercial Bank Grand Prix of Qatar, Laverty besting
the pair for 12th.
The
2016 Qatar race saw Laverty improve his pace from 2015 by a massive 12
seconds, roughly half a second a lap faster. Scoring four points sees
Laverty already almost halfway to beating the total number of points he
acquired in 2015: nine. After struggling on the Open Honda, stepping to
the much more powerful Ducati has been a revelation and Laverty is
hopeful of much more to come throughout the year now many of his larger
issues have been solved. The MotoGP™ World Championship now heads to the
double header of Argentina and Austin, the Termas de Rio Hondo a
circuit that Laverty fell in love with on his first visit there in 2015.
Eugene Laverty: “We
made big progress here compared to preseason, suddenly on Saturday we
had a big breakthrough and today we achieved a positive result. I had a
problem at the start with a bit of wheel spin off the line because I was
on a dirty part of the track and then on lap one Loris Baz ran me wide
off the track. So it was a disastrous start but after that we managed to
come back well. I had a good fight with Miller and Bautista and I think
we can be happy to start the season with a twelfth place. The next race
is Argentina, I rode there for the first time last season and already
it became one of my favourite tracks. It really suits my riding style so
I am happy to be leaving here with some confidence in the bag, the team
is working fantastic and I think we can go to Argentina now to fight
for the top ten.”
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