Lecuona eighth in Race 1 at Misano, Vierge rounds out the top ten

“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.”