| From P13 on the grid, the team’s Northern Irishman fought through to seventh in the Superpole Race this morning to earn himself a well-deserved opportunity to take the bull by the horns in the final feature race this afternoon. Rea made another brilliant start to run fifth in the opening lap and later pass Alex Lowes for P4 on Lap 8, before running three-wide to take Danilo Petrucci for third position into the Turn 5 hairpin on Lap 9. A back-and-forth tussle with Lowes in Laps 10 and 11 meant the chasing group was able to gain ground, and “JR” fell victim to Michael van der Mark and later Alvaro Bautista – but taking a hard-fought sixth place gave reason to smile for Rea and his crew.
A top result for Locatelli after yesterday’s incredible 17-place grid progression (which broke the record for the number of positions gained in a WorldSBK race in Magny-Cours) was more difficult to achieve. With just 10 laps to make it into the top nine to be able to improve his grid position for Race 2, the Superpole Race odds were not in his favour. The 28-year-old pushed hard to come through the field, but a result of P12 relegated him to the back row once again.
Finding a strong rhythm in the middle part of Race 2 helped the #55 rider to progress into the top 10 and take up position in the group working towards the top five in the closing stages, to cross the line P9 at the chequered flag.
In the FIM Women’s Circuit Racing World Championship, Beatriz Neila celebrated a crucial and emphatic win in Race 2 with the team’s Ampito Crescent Yamaha entry – closing the gap to the championship leader to just six points with one round remaining at the end of season finale in Jerez next month.
Pata Maxus Yamaha will return to action for Round 10 of the premier WorldSBK class in just over two weeks’ time at MotorLand Aragon, on 26-28 September.
Jonathan Rea – SPRC: P7 / Race 2: P6
“It was a good Sunday for my side of the box at Pata Maxus Yamaha! In the Superpole Race, I made a good start from P13 and was able to be in that group fighting for the front three rows on the grid, which is so important to give me a good start position for the long race. I finished P7, a great opportunity to start well and see what my rhythm was really like! In Race 2, I was able to make that good start and found myself in a battle with Alex and Danilo – my pace felt good, but maybe naïvely I was fighting with Alex for the podium and started to get a bit excited – I wasn’t making mistakes but we just didn’t quite have that pace and the fight caused us to lose our gap to the group behind. This allowed Mikey and Alvaro to join the group, and it was a nice fight to the end. A solid P6 ahead of some good guys is really positive for us, from where we were at the beginning of the season with injury, disappointment and tough races, but I feel like I’m starting to ride the bike the way it wants to be! I enjoyed the track here in Magny-Cours – the weekend didn’t start as well as we expected but it’s finished strong and given us some confidence to take to Aragon and to finish the year well. Kudos to everyone from the team!”
Andrea Locatelli – SPRC: P12 / Race 2: P9
“This morning in the Superpole Race, we tried to recover as much as possible to try to start in the first three rows – but, it was quite difficult, in only 10 laps it’s not easy to overtake a lot of bikes when we start from the last row. In Race 2, we started again from the back – I tried to push hard from the start, but the riders are all close – it was not easy to overtake and I was losing a little bit in the first laps. In the middle of the race, I was alone and able to do my rhythm and then I started to recover with the group working towards the top five but it was too late. We need to look forward, to have some points from Race 1 and Race 2 even starting from the back is not so bad, but with the confidence that we showed on Friday – maybe without crashing in Superpole and a better start position, the story was completely different. The weekend was a bit unlucky! Now we have a couple of weeks to analyse everything and arrive in Aragon with a strong belief in myself again, focus on trying to take another step and pushing hard.”
Paul Denning – Team Principal, Pata Maxus Yamaha:
“Following Jonathan’s announcement that 2025 will be his last year as a full-time WorldSBK racer, it was a pleasure to see that the motivation for the last part of this season was as strong as it has always been: 13th to seventh in the 10-lap Superpole sprint and then a brilliant start to Race 2, fighting hard with Alex, Danilo, Michael and the guys for a well-deserved top six – it looked at one point that it could have been even better! It’s been a tough time for JR, so to see him and his crew with smiles on their faces and fighting back towards competitiveness was great. For Andrea, from the back of the grid to get to the top nine in 10 laps against such a stacked field in the Superpole Race was always going to be difficult. He struggled a little bit with his feeling on the bike and wasn’t able to quite make it, so another back-row start for Race 2. P9 at the end and only half a second off Petrucci was a strong recovery and we just needed a couple more laps to make more progress up the field. In the end, his results after such incredible Free Practice pace are obviously disappointing – but in WorldSBK, a big crash in qualifying and starting from last is never going to make the job easy, so we have to take the positives from Magny-Cours, head to Aragon and re-join the fight for the top three in the championship.” |
