Qualifying hampers Marco Bezzecchi at Argentina MotoGP

Qualifying remains the “weakest point” for Marco Bezzecchi on his adaptation to the Aprilia RS-GP, he says.

The Aprilia Racing rider qualified ninth for the Argentinian Grand Prix, before racing to seventh in Saturday’s Sprint, a result which he said at least yielded some satisfaction.

“It was a decent race,” Bezzecchi told MotoGP.com after the Sprint.

“Starting ninth was not the best, but still in qualifying I’m struggling a bit – it’s my weakest point, let’s say.

“During the Sprint I had a pretty good pace, I was strong in braking so I could make some good overtakes and I’m pretty satisfied.

“But starting from ninth is always tough, so it was the best I could do today and hopefully tomorrow I can make another step.”

Qualifying was also the beginning of a difficult day for satellite Aprilia rider Ai Ogura, although perhaps the expectations for the Japanese rider are somewhat inflated after his double-top-five in Thailand.

The Trackhouse Racing rider was 15th at the chequered flag – ahead of his teammate Raul Fernandez, but frustrated by a number of mistakes.

“In qualifying, in some parts of the track, I improved a little bit from [Friday], but it wasn’t enough for Q2 and I had a crash in Q1,” he said.

“In the race, the bike was okay, but I had a bad start and the first few corners I couldn’t gain any positions and after there were another two or three mistakes they were really big mistakes.

“Then I was coming back to my rhythm, but it was not really fantastic, so I gained a couple of positions.

“It was still a good race, a good qualifying, but tomorrow there is another race with much longer distance so I’m just looking forward to racing tomorrow.”