Lecuona and Vierge seek more at Barcelona home track

“After the race I felt some fatigue and a bit of pain in my left shoulder, but I have to say that this track wasn’t too much of a stress on me physically and it was more a matter of managing the tyre life. From lap ten to twenty everyone was basically just trying to save the tyres and not push to the limit, a bit like in an endurance race. It’s true that one of my strong points is braking so I continued to push but could go a bit easier into the corners and finish the race at a decent level. As for the rest, we’re not going to say this is an easy weekend of course. Two years ago, we were on pole here while today, despite an almost perfect lap in qualifying, I finished eighteenth. It’s not easy to accept for anyone in the team, honestly. In the race we were almost able to stick with the group ahead, which included my teammate. The gap increased a little at times because I wanted to save the tyres as much as possible for the last laps. In the meantime, I enjoyed some battles with Rinaldi and Gerloff and then eventually I caught Xavi. We had a good fight all the way to the final corner where, thanks to a slightly better tyre, I was able to get past him. Not a positive result, as thirteenth is definitely not our target, but we had some fun anyway. Now let’s see what we can do tomorrow.”

"It was a really difficult race. In the morning, we ran a good FP3, improving our pace with used tyres and also with the 'Q' spec. We didn't change anything on the bike, but then in the Superpole I felt I had no grip at all, especially on corner entry with both my soft tyres. It was as if the rear wanted to overtake the front, a very strange sensation that I hadn't experienced in the last few days at this track. So, that made for a horrible qualifying session. Despite that though, we knew that our race pace was not bad. I made a good start and was able to overtake several riders, positioning myself just behind Bassani. From there, I focused on managing tyre wear, taking care of the engine brake and throttle, but in any case, with five or six laps to go, the right side of the tyre degraded significantly, which meant I lost a lot of grip and couldn't defend my position. We must think about how to address this issue for tomorrow, which won't be easy because I think we already did a good job and had a solid plan today. But we'll see, especially considering that the weather conditions may change compared to today."