The second day of action on the newly resurfaced and redesigned Montmelo Circuit saw temperatures climbing and lap times dropping.

For the majority of the morning’s FP3 session, Friday’s times stood. With less than 10 minutes left on the clock a few riders were able to improve, but it was difficult for those due to be in Q1 to make up the difference and elevate themselves directly into Q2. Alex Rins improved his time by four tenths with moments left in the session, but missed out on the Top 10. Andrea Iannone, already safely into Q2 due to his strong performance on Friday, used the session to try some different settings.

FP4 was hot and hectic ahead of qualifying, but Andrea Iannone was able to impress during the session, topping the time sheet with a 1:39.708 and holding the position until the chequered flag.

Alex Rins, forced to try to fight through from Q1, found some struggles at his home circuit. Although he went 3rd at one point, he was unfortunately unable to progress through to Q2, he will take 15th slot on the grid tomorrow. Sylvain Guintoli, appearing for the first time this season as a Wild Card, will start 25th.

The track temperatures soared to 38c for Q2 and the 15-minute session saw plenty of action. Andrea Iannone stuck with his favoured soft-soft combination and tried to reach the front row, he crossed the line just 0.468 seconds from the top and took 5th spot on the grid for tomorrow’s 24 lap race.

Davide Brivio - Team Manager

“It’s been a good day for Andrea, we worked well. This morning he had good pace and we managed to qualify on the second row, in fifth position - which is a good starting position for the race. So I think we can try to be in the top group, and we’ll see tomorrow about the temperatures and tyre choice. Of course, the races are very unpredictable but I think he’ll be able to make a good result. Alex is still struggling, today we had hoped to improve more. He’ll start 15th, but we’ll see what we can try to improve tomorrow and he will try to make a good start like he did in Mugello. Sylvain is doing a good job, he’s enjoying it and giving good information to us.”

Andrea Iannone

“We had similar problems today as yesterday, we tried to improve but we didn’t feel any difference and this is a shame because we’ve used the same bike from FP1 and we’ve tried a few things but I don’t really feel any different. For the race I need to improve by two or three tenths to try to fight for the podium, and at the moment I can’t find that extra time, but in any case, we’ll try our best and continue to work to find a plan for tomorrow.”

Alex Rins

“It’s been a difficult weekend for me, definitely not easy in the heat with the fast corners and we’re missing out a bit there like we did in the test. So we’re working on that, but we still need to find a bit more for the race. The difference between Andrea and me is in the last two corners, the fast ones, so I need to find more. The tyre allocation is a bit difficult also, but I look forward to the race tomorrow.”

Sylvain Guintoli

“Today we went a bit faster with the soft tyre, and we’re getting quicker. It was good to ride in the hot conditions this afternoon and we did a sort of race simulation with the tyres and a full tank of fuel, that was interesting to do. It’s great to be back racing, but the pace is completely different to the testing pace. I’m really happy to be here and feel the adrenaline, and at the same time try to collect data and try new things. It’s great to race in terms of collecting data, and personally it’s great fun too. I hope tomorrow I can have a consistent pace and bring back some useful info.”