Sylvain Guintoli was surprised to finish only 2.6s off the pace on his return to MotoGP after spending 20 laps getting used to the Ecstar Suzuki he will campaign at Le Mans in a couple of weeks.
The Frenchman is standing in for injured Alex Rins at his home race and spent the afternoon acclimatising to the differences between the GSX-RR and his BSB-spec GSX-R1000R, and the switch from Pirelli to Michelin tyres.
“This day was even better than I expected. The feeling with a MotoGP bike is something difficult to explain, it’s unique, and this Suzuki GSX-RR is just fantastic. For me today was only a few laps to understand how the bike behaves, and also to try to understand the Michelin tyres which I haven’t ridden since 2002, so quite a big time,” said Guintoli, who last race in MotoGP six years ago for Ducati.
“I felt good, we managed to improve the lap time step-by-step and I literally can’t wait for tomorrow to keep improving the feeling and work with this fantastic bike and crew. The engine is so fast and so smooth, I’m impressed. Now I have also to work on my riding style because looking at the data it looks like I’m already strong in braking and acceleration, but I can improve the feeling with entrance and cornering speed.
“It’s pretty normal as it’s a completely different machine from the one I’m used to race, I was expecting this but honestly I was expecting also my gap from the top to be much bigger, but instead I’m not so far.”
Guintoli’s best lap of 1’41.260 came on his 30th of 37 and compares well to team regular Andrea Iannone who set a 1’39.654 on his 92nd lap of the day. Guintoli will again test at Jerez tomorrow.
