Untapped potential for TeamHRC at Magny-Cours

“This has been a very tough weekend for us, for several reasons. A new track, we lost Friday due to the bad weather and struggled with the bike setup… It seems we were lacking something in various areas, which prevented us from learning and improving. My start in the Superpole race was very bad today and I found myself seventeenth on the first lap! I felt very strong though and was able to climb back up to tenth before the rear tyre dropped with two laps to go. Finishing eleventh meant that I had to start further back in Race 2 and I felt really frustrated about that. I started better anyway, passing some riders through the first corner and trying to push to make up further positions. But again something happened and I almost lost the front through turn eight. I managed to save it, picking up the bike somehow, after which I stuck more or less with Locatelli, Baz and Gerloff but wasn’t unable to catch them, despite trying right the way to the last corner. We need to learn from this, to understand what happened during the weekend so we can come back stronger for the next race.”

“It has been a weekend of ups and downs because we showed some speed but weren’t able to put it to good use to reach our targets. Yesterday we had very good pace but couldn’t maintain it until the end of the race. In today’s Superpole race I was making a very good comeback but then I made a small mistake in my braking and crashed. Then I failed to make a strong start to race 2 and lost more ground when Van der Mark crashed in front of me, as I had to avoid him. In trying to push hard to recover, I then crashed again. I can only apologize to my team for these two mistakes, I was giving 100% every lap and I will continue to give it my all.”