An unlucky Sunday for Team HRC despite increased speed and pace at Barcelona

“Today’s been a bittersweet day. In this morning’s warm-up I was pleased with how the bike was working because we were able to fix the setup issue we had yesterday, and our feeling was a lot better. In the Superpole race I moved into the lead, the first time we’ve been able to do that, which means we are continuing to improve. I was feeling so good on the bike and to be out front again that perhaps I was a little overconfident and pushed a bit too hard, which resulted in a crash. A pity. Physically I wasn’t feeling good ahead of race 2 but I when I jumped on my bike, I saw I was able to ride despite my foot injury. The pain was not too bad. But then the bike stopped on the sighting lap and so I didn’t have chance to compete at all. We’re looking into what the problem was. It was a pity because we had good pace also for race 2 and could have battled with the frontrunners in both the day’s races. Anyway, we will take the positives of this weekend. I’m happy with the job we are doing and with our steps forward and now we’ll see if we can make the most of the final two rounds and score the kind of results we deserve.”

“A tough day for us. We made a bad start in the Superpole race and although my feeling was OK over the first lap, I was then hit from behind and crashed with Caricasulo. At first I thought I might have broken my leg but luckily that wasn’t the case and I was just very stiff in my lower body. After another bad start in race 2, my pace was not too bad and I was starting to catch some other riders. We had a good battle with Lowes, but then a small mistake in the final stages meant I eventually finished ninth. It was a tough race and I had some arm pump due to a lack of mobility following the crash, but we have made some steps forward if we consider the entire weekend. It’s just a pity about the actual race results because we had the potential to run top five today. Anyway, we move on to Magny-Cours and will try our best again there.”