French star Johann Zarco delivered a surprising performance today at the Italian Grand Prix, following a slightly cautious start this morning, he did incredibly well during the last minutes of FP2 to clinch the fourth spot in the combined timings. Thereby, the Monster Yamaha Tech3 rider concluded the first day of practice as the best independent team rider of the MotoGP World Championship field.
On the other side of the Tech3 garage, for the first time ever Hafizh Syahrin discovered the Mugello circuit on a big bike and displayed a fantastic effort in lowering his lap time by 1.704 seconds from FP1 to FP2 in order to secure a position inside the top 15. At the end of the day, the Malaysian rookie found himself just 0.581 seconds behind his fast teammate.
Hafizh Syahrin
Position: 15th – Time: 1’47.946 – Laps: 37
“I felt really good on the last run of FP2, because we made a huge step. We improved by nearly two seconds in comparison to this morning. In the first session, I was too nervous and quite far from the other rookies, but this afternoon we managed to do a very good practice. With the team I tried to understand everything and I tried to change my riding in order to improve in every corner. We were changing some small things with the two bikes and I was a lot better. We’ll see, if we can keep this momentum for tomorrow, but I hope to do my best ever qualifying and stay close to Morbidelli.”
Johann Zarco
Position: 4th – Time: 1’47.365 – Laps: 41