Foggia Chases Another Win, Kunii Returns
Circuit de Barcelona-CatalunyaDennis Foggia (Leopard Racing Honda NSF250RW) won Honda’s first Moto3 victory of the year at Mugello last Sunday and is anxious to maintain his winning momentum this weekend.
The success was the 20-year-old Italian’s second Moto3 victory with Honda, following his maiden Grand Prix win at Brno last August. Although the Barcelona-Catalunya is very different from Mugello Foggia is confident that he can once again be in the lead group during Sunday’s race.
Foggia’s Mugello success followed two difficult races and moved him into ninth place in the World Championship, just two points behind Darryn Binder (Petronas Sprinta Racing Honda NSF250RW) and Andrea Migno (Rivacold Snipers Team Honda NSF250RW). The 23-year-old South African and 25-year-old Italian have both achieved podium results this year but have yet to finish on the top step.
Honda Team Asia will have three Moto3 riders this weekend. Yuki Kunii (Honda Team Asia Honda NSF250RW) re-joins team-mate Andi Farid Izdihar (Honda Team Asia Honda NSF250RW) after missing two races through injury and Takuma Matsuyama (Honda Team Asia Honda NSF250RW) contests his third consecutive race with the team.
Kunii is contesting his second World Championship this year and underlined the impressive progress he is making by scoring his first points in the Doha and Spanish GPs, only to fall during qualifying for last month’s French GP. That tumble fractured his left collarbone and forced the 18-year-old from Setagaya to miss the Le Mans race and the subsequent Italian GP. Now he is back and keen to resume learning and improving.
Izdihar is hopeful of good things this weekend after joining his team at a recent test session at Barcelona-Catalunya, which taught him plenty about riding a Moto3 bike around the track. This is the 23-year-old Indonesian’s first GP season in the category, after spending his rookie GP year in Moto2.
The Catalan GP continues a very busy period for Matsuyama. The 16-year-old scored his first Moto3 Junior World Championship podium at Valencia on 9th May, made his GP debut as a wild card at the following weekend’s French GP, substituted for the injured Kunii at Mugello and has another wild card entry this weekend.
The 16-year-old from Chiba is treating this GP outings very much as a learning process. He returns to Junior World Championship next week at Barcelona-Catalunya.
After Sunday’s racing the 2021 Moto3 World Championship continues with back-to-back races, the German GP on 20th June and the Dutch TT on 27th June.
Finally I’m happy because I am coming back to race again after missing two races with my broken collarbone. Unfortunately the injury forced me to miss testing at Catalunya, but anyway at Le Mans I was feeling good on the bike. In general we are always improving and I will try to continue in that direction this weekend. I will push hard from FP1, always aiming for the best performance.
I feel ready for this Barcelona-Catalunya race because we have already tested at the track, so we have a lot of information from that test. I think we will start the weekend more prepared than usual, so I will take this advantage and work to get my best result. The last race was difficult because it was my first time at Mugello. This Sunday we will do better.
This is my third Grand Prix in four weekends and once again my aim is to learn as much as I can from riding with the best riders in the world, so that I can use all this experience in the future. I can’t wait to get started and work for the best result I can get.