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MAXIMUM ACHIEVED IN FIRST QUALIFYING

For Dominique Aegerter, lack of pre-season testing was clearly noticeable during Saturday evening’s first timed of the new season.

Strong winds and lots of sand on the 5.4 kilometres long track in the desert of Qatar did cause significantly worse track conditions on day two of practice at this weekend’s season opener in the middle east. In addition, Dominique Aegerter struggled with the recently introduced time schedule, which contains one session in hot conditions in the afternoon and a second practice in the early evening hours.

Despite tricky conditions, Aegerter was able to improve on his lap time from the previous day by two tenths of a second during qualifying. The KTM rider will thus head into this year’s opening race from P21 on the starting grid. With this starting position, however, the 27-year-old from Switzerland was not entirely satisfied.

The lights will go out for the 2018 Moto2™ World Championship on Sunday at 5:20pm local time which means 3:20pm CET.

#77 Dominique AEGERTER (Kiefer Racing), Grid position 21st - 2´01.745 (17/17):

"Although we were able to improve in some parts of the track, it was a difficult qualifying overall. For the moment, it is still hard to understand what we need to do so that I can ride faster. In some areas, we have already come closer to the matter, but the other way around, there are always some setbacks to overcome. Today’s conditions, however, which were the same for everyone, as well as the entire schedule for this weekend did not really suite us. The duration of each practice is very short and the difference in terms of conditions in the afternoon and in the evening are enormous. In the end, there were only two sessions to prepare for the race. Nevertheless, the outcome of today’s qualifying is disappointing, even more as I wanted a lower gap with no more than one second at least. Obviously, we are not ready yet so that we can fully attack. We will now analyse the situation calmly and look in which direction we have to work for the race."

Moto2™ GP of Qatar – Qualifying Results:
1 Alex MARQUEZ / SPA / Estrella Galicia 0,0 Marc VDS / KALEX / 2´00.299
2 Lorenzo BALDASSARRI / ITA / Pons HP40 / KALEX / 2´00.607 +0.308
3 Francesco BAGNAIA / ITA / SKY Racing Team VR46 / KALEX / 2´00.843 +0.544
21 #77 Dominique AEGERTER / SWI / Kiefer Racing / KTM / 2´01.745 +1.446