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FOURTH ROW START IN ARGENTINA MARKS ANOTHER STEP FORWARD

In difficult conditions, Dominique Aegerter stormed to P11 on the starting grid aboard his Moto2™ during Saturday afternoon’s qualifying.

Changeable weather due to recurrent drizzle was the constant companion on day two of practice at the Termas de Rio Hondo circuit in the northwest Argentina. The track’s condition was extremely hard to evaluate because of different and changing conditions along the 4.8 kilometres circuit.

But Dominique Aegerter and his team Kiefer Racing began their time hunt with a daring poker in terms of tyre choice. In the end, however, the 27-year-old Swiss rider set his fastest lap time in the last minutes of the session, pushing his bike tuned with full rain setup to the limits. Eleventh fastest during this thrilling timed session means he secured a good position for the race.

The lights will go out for the season’s second race on Sunday 6:20 pm.

#77 Dominique AEGERTER (Kiefer Racing), Grid position 11th - 1´57.582 (19/20):

"Today’s conditions were very difficult because of a half-wet and half-dry track. Qualifying, however, was still an interesting affair, because initially we went out with a rain tyre for the front and a rear slick. It was a risky decision, but it was ok to ride so. The plan was to go immediately for a time attack with this this configuration. But this idea did not work out. Finally, we also put in a rain tyre for the rear and I did more than ten laps with this. I slowly started to find the limits, but it was difficult to get a flowing rhythm because sometimes the track started to dry out at a few places, and in the next moment it started to rain again."

"From the point of view of our grid position, the result is ok. To start from the fourth row is a step, of course, or in other words we were able to keep our position from free practices at least. On the other hand, it is difficult to say something about the bike. In such conditions you simply can’t make progress. Nevertheless, considering the track’s conditions of today, our performance was ok. Since the forecasts for race day are equally bad, we should be already well prepared. It was also good to have a dry ride on Friday, so this means that we are therefore ready for all possible cases."

Moto2™ GP Argentina - Qualifying Classification:
1 Xavi VIERGE / SPA / Dynavolt Intact GP / KALEX / 1´56.137
2 Lorenzo BALDASSARRI / ITA / Pons HP40 / KALEX / 1´56.408 +0.271
3 Danny KENT / GBR / MB Converyors – Speed Up Racing / Speed Up / 1´56.536 +0.399
11 #77 Dominique AEGERTER / SWI / Kiefer Racing / KTM / 1´57.582 +1.445