In 250cc the Repsol riders and the rest of the participants were affected by rain just after the timed session started and this reduced the useful time out on the track. Julián Simón had been improving as the day went by, above all thanks to the modifications that let him feel more comfortable, compared to the training session in the morning and the sessions before the German GP.
His companion Shuhei Aoyama did not have time to find any modifications, because in the morning he was testing two different things on the two bikes. One was prepared with last year’s set up and the other with this year’s. At the end of the session, Aoyama felt more comfortable with this year’s settings, so he was able to rule some things out and see the way forward more clearly.
In the afternoon he began breaking in a new engine, and when he was about to up the tempo rain began to fall so he had to stop work. In the smallest category the young Repsol riders Bradley Smith and Esteve Rabat finished in the middle of the classification after returning to work.
In the morning, Rabat set the eleventh best time and Smith the seventeenth. In the afternoon their times they were closer to the leaders, Rabat finishing thirteenth and Smith fourteenth.
