21 August 2020 – Red Bull Ring – Spielberg – Austria.

At the end of the first day of free practice of the Grand Prix of Styria, in the combined ranking we find 18 pilots in one second. This shows that the double race on the same track, increases the competitiveness of all the pilots on starting grid. Comparing the combined rankings related to Friday of this week and the one of last week, both Romano and Alonso have improved their times, respectively by 0.608 s and 0.454 s. Before taking a close look to the performances of our two pilots, it needs to be said that the weather conditions of this Friday have been perfect, with clear sky and the typical temperatures of this time of the year.

Romano in the combined ranking, comprehensive of the three rounds of free practice, results to be in twentieth position, with a gap from the leader C. Vietti of 1.074 s. Throughout the two session he did thirty-three laps and he succeeded to seal his best lap during the FP2, with the time of 1’37.071.
Alonso in the combined free practice obtained his best lap during the morning session, with the time of 1’37.493. He did 34 laps in the two session of free practice. He has a time gap of 1.496 s from the leader of the combined ranking.

We would like to remind that the first 14 pilots have direct access to the Q2, thus tomorrow the Free Practice 3 will be crucial in order to improve the result.
Here are the words of the protagonists about this first day of free practice.

Romano Fenati: “It is very important to work well in the free practice, to be able to do a good qualifying tomorrow. We are not happy about the result, but we have been pretty fast, we almost replicated the time obtained in the race using used tires. We still need to work a little bit more.”

Alonso Lopez: “I am satisfied with the overall result of today, because slowly we are understanding better the bike and this will be take us to be more competitive. The goal for tomorrow will be to understand even more the bike and to be faster with the slipstreams.”

Max Biaggi – Team Owner: “A not very positive and under the expectations Friday. We hope that the weekend will not be the copy of the previous one, because the whole Team deserves better results than the one that we are obtaining right now.”