Tito Rabat (Reale Avintia Racing) continues to impress during 2019 preseason as he set the sixth fastest time on Day 1 at the Qatar Test, a 1:55.694 on his 44th and final lap of the day put him 0.643 off top spot.
Rabat had a strong opening two days at the Sepang Test after finishing fourth and seventh, but didn’t quite find the speed on the final day to keep himself up the sharp end of the times. And after a positive opening day in Qatar, Rabat is hoping he can sustain this level of performance across the three days.
“Yes today as usual with this bike I arrive and have a very good setup from the start, the bike worked really good. But like in Malaysia, the first day was really good, also the second day, but the third day I struggled a little bit.
“But we know what happened, here the same situation a bit. We start very good, good lap time, what I have to learn to be a better rider is to say to the technicians how to improve my bike to go faster. Then sure on the last day, we will go much faster.”
All things considered, the 2014 Moto2™ World Champion is happy with how he is feeling on his GP18: “I’m happy because we have good pace, a good engine, a good team. Now I need to find the way to stop the bike with less metres, especially at the beginning. This will be the next step to allow us to go faster.”
And his aim for Day 2 is exactly that, as well as improving the front end feeling in the middle of the corner: “The important thing will be to improve tomorrow, this is the difficult thing because the bike works well, everything works well. I need to make good indications to improve the lap time tomorrow and the next day even more.
I want to break harder, keeping the front feeling of the tyre in the middle of the corner. This is my target for tomorrow.”
See how Rabat and his competitors get on during the second day in the desert with Live Timing from 16:00 local time (GMT +3). And, what’s more, you can watch a live After the Flag episode to get all the analysis from Day 2 from 21:30 local time (GMT +3).