Tony Arbolino recovered from a slow speed crash admirably to qualify 11th for the Grand Prix of the Americas, while Filip Salac was 20th.

• Conditions were once again perfect on Saturday at the spectacular Circuit of the Americas for Elf Marc VDS Racing Team riders Tony Arbolino and Filip Salac. Both rode in track temperatures of 39 degrees during qualifying.
• The pace was once again red hot on Saturday. After the lap record from 2022 was smashed by 0.3 on Friday, the fastest speed was a massive 1.2s quicker on Saturday morning that the previous record.

/// TONY ARBOLINO, 11th – 2’08.127

• After making a series of overnight changes to set-up, Tony bettered his personal best time from Friday by half a second on his first flying lap of Practice 2, a session in which he finished 13th.
• The Italian was just finding his rhythm in Q2 when he suffered an unfortunate fall at Turn 15. After remounting and returning to the pits, Tony then posted a time good enough for 11th, just 0.496s off Aron Canet’s pole position time.

“I’ll give it my all in the race”

“Things didn’t go perfectly for me today but the one thing I can say is that I’m trying to give it my all. Both myself and the team have been working as hard as we can in the best direction possible. We’re still understanding things with this year’s package. I believe a lot in my team and the work they’re doing. I think we’ll have a nice Sunday. We’ll try to fix the bike a bit for tomorrow and you can be sure that I’ll give it my all in the race.”

/// FILIP SALAC, 20th – 2’08.599

• After missing the previous round, Filip is getting more comfortable aboard the bike in every session. But despite improving his personal best time from Friday by 0.4 in Practice 2, he ended the session 22nd.
• The Czech rider is still adapting to the new Pirelli tyres and didn’t feel entirely confident in Q1, where he set the 6th fastest time, meaning he’ll start tomorrow’s race from 20th.

“We’re still missing something to have a good feeling with the tyres”

“It wasn’t an easy day for us. In the morning, I wasn’t able to set a fast lap time in the end. So I had to go through to Q1. There I did my best but we’re still missing something to have a good feeling with the tyres. We need to keep working to improve that. I’ll give it my all tomorrow to finish as high as possible. I want to thank the team because I can see they are giving everything as well.”