Lecuona eighth in Race 1 at Misano, Vierge rounds out the top ten
Misano World Circuit “Marco Simoncelli”Team HRC riders Iker Lecuona and Xavi Vierge crossed the line eighth and tenth in the first race of the fifth Superbike World Championship round, taking place at the Misano World Circuit in Italy.
Team HRC riders Iker Lecuona and Xavi Vierge crossed the line eighth and tenth in the first race of the fifth Superbike World Championship round, taking place at the Misano World Circuit in Italy.
Both riders took a significant step in the morning’s FP3. In cooler conditions with respect to yesterday’s practices, Lecuona was able to lower his time by a good seven tenths as he and the team continued to prepare for the subsequent Superpole session. Vierge also shaved off another couple of tenths, although the focus, like yesterday, was on race preparation rather than the single lap.
Back out at 11.10am local time for a frantic Superpole qualifying session, the Team HRC duo both pushed to earn the best possible grid positions for the afternoon’s first race. Iker immediately set a very fast 1’33.830 to place a momentary second. By the end of this brief phase, the Spaniard was lying eighth thanks to that same lap time, meaning that he secured a spot on the third row of the grid for race 1. Team-mate Xavi was particularly unlucky, in that just as he was pushing to improve on his time – his second split time putting him within four tenths of leader Bautista’s best – a red flag interrupted proceedings and put a premature end to the session. He therefore closed with a best of 1’34.434 with which he placed sixteenth.
The first of the weekend’s three races ran in warm, sunny conditions but got underway a few minutes late and was reduced to a distance of 20 laps after another rider had a technical issue on the start grid. From row three, Lecuona was lying eighth by the end of lap one, team-mate Vierge thirteenth. The factory riders maintained these positions in the early stages, before Iker got involved in a battle with Lowes and Xavi moved up into twelfth place, before progressing to eleventh by lap thirteen. The Team HRC duo ultimately crossed the line eighth (Lecuona) and tenth (Vierge) in this first race of the weekend.
Team HRC will be back on track at Misano tomorrow for the 10-lap Superpole race followed, in the afternoon, by the final race of the weekend.
I’m happy enough with the job we’ve done today because we continued on in the same positive way we saw in FP2, and also in FP3 this morning I had good feeling. As for qualifying, I placed P8 but very close in terms of lap time to the second row so I went into race 1 satisfied and aware that we could fight as part of the second group. I made a decent start but a few aggressive moves from some other riders into the first corner caused me to drop back from the second group. I tried catching them again but in doing so I realized I was overly stressing the tyres. I decided to try and conserve them for a few laps and when Alex (Lowes) overtook me, I tried to follow him and also open a gap to the chasing pack. I was able to stick with Alex until more or less five laps from the end but then the tyres suffered a big drop, probably due to the fact that I had pushed a lot earlier on, and Remy (Gardner) closed in on me. I had a good battle with him and we passed each other in the last lap but ultimately I was able to defend eighth place so all in all we can be satisfied with the fact we’re back at a good level again. Now it’s time to check the data and try to make another step for tomorrow. The weather could change a bit so we will see.
We were expecting much more from today but starting so far back on the grid made everything really difficult, especially at a track like Misano. What frustrated me the most is that we had the potential to do much better but were once again very unlucky in qualifying, in that we had a yellow flag with my first tyre and then the session was red flagged just as I was making a very fast lap with the second tyre. So it was a very hard race from sixteenth in the grid. Over the first laps I wasn’t able to overtake because we’re losing a bit out of the corners and the straights are not long enough here to exploit our top speed, so it wasn’t easy to close in on those ahead. Once conditions allowed me to pass a few riders, following a general drop in the tyres, it was too late to try and score a better result. Top ten is not that bad but it's not what we want to achieve. It is what it is anyway, and we will try and earn a better starting position for race 2 by finishing top nine in the sprint race. That would help us to be more competitive in race 2.
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