The first day of practice at the Austrian GP demonstrated the development work started in Monday's testing in Brno.
Suzuki rider Andrea Iannone was able to benefit from the new settings and continue to focus on the race preparation, albeit without proper attempts to the time attack.
In the morning session, the technical progress made in Brno's testing paid off immediately, with Iannone consistently improving in his performances. working hard with medium tyres to pull off a good pace and set his best time at 1'25.608, earning him 14th position in classification, the last of the 14 riders closing in on the one second gap.
At the end of the today's session Iannone was down in 17th place in the combined classification (1'25.218)
“The test in Brno gave us some improvements, but overall we've been improving since the beginning of the year,” Iannone said. “Today I felt positive, especially considering that we only went with a medium tyre and we didn't try the time attack with the soft. In the afternoon the pace was good with worn tyres."
"Tomorrow it will be important to take advantage of the soft tyres. Today we tried a new one only at the rear and not at the front, which means we can still improve. We also still have some margin in the setup. We are improving and I think tomorrow we can aim at getting direct access to the Q2 and also hope for a top ten qualifying.”
