Podium success for Vierge and Team HRC in race 2 at Mandalika!

Sunday’s World Superbike action at the Mandalika International Street Circuit may have brought two red-flagged races but this didn’t deter Team HRC, which was able to achieve its first podium of the 2023 season after Xavi Vierge ran an incredibly courageous race 2 to finish third!

The Superpole race got underway on time and in dry conditions. Xavi Vierge and Iker Lecuona moved straight into eighth and tenth, but the race was red-flagged after a lap one incident left oil on the track. With the race restarted shortly afterwards and reduced to just eight laps, Vierge soon progressed to sixth position, his strong pace allowing him to fight with the frontrunners. In the final lap Xavi held firm and finished this frantic sprint race in sixth place. Lecuona unfortunately wasn’t able to be as incisive as he’d been when the race began for the first time, placing fourteenth through the opening laps. Slipping back a little further as the race went on, Iker crossed the line sixteenth.

The final race began on dry asphalt but under cloudy skies. Lecuona worked hard over the opening stages of the race to progress from fifteenth to twelfth place. Vierge again got away well and was lying sixth early on, soon getting into a very strong rhythm that saw him move up into third by lap six. Part of a tight group of about six riders, the Spaniard was going great guns when the race was brought to a halt on lap seven after a crash involving two riders. The race was soon restarted, with riders lining up in the positions they had occupied prior to the interruption, so from third and ninth in the case of Vierge and Lecuona. Fourth and ninth by the end of lap one, the Team HRC duo did well to hold their positions considering the battles going on all around them. Despite lying a little further back, Lecuona’s lap times mirrored those of the frontrunners. Moving into eighth on lap nine, Iker battled Gardner in the latter stages of the race before concluding ninth. Picking up pace through the central stages of the race, Xavi was able to stick within half a second of Razgatlioglu, ahead in third, until the final stages of the race. Vierge’s determination paid off on the very last lap, when a mistake for another rider gave the Honda rider the opportunity to finish top three. Xavi crossed the line third to secure his first podium of the season, as well as his first aboard the CBR1000RR-R!

Team HRC currently places seventh in the standings with Vierge (43 points) and ninth with Lecuona (33 points). The factory squad will now continue its work back at base in preparation for the first of the European rounds, scheduled to take place at the Assen TT Circuit in The Netherlands over the weekend of 21-23 April.