| The sprint race on the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya proved to be a difficult one for Aprilia Racing, with all three riders forced to retire. Two episodes in particular brought an unfortunate early end to Marco Bezzecchi and Jorge Martín’s race, both involved in reckless manoeuvres by rivals they were ahead of.
Starting from the twelfth spot on the grid, Marco Bezzecchi had begun the sprint race with determination, making up positions in the early laps with a good pace. His race, however, was interrupted on turn 5 when he was taken down by another rider attempting to overtake, thereby ruling out any chance of making a comeback. During the medical checkup that followed, Bezzecchi suffered a contusion in the left forearm and the left hip with no fractures.
Jorge Martín also got off to a solid start in the sprint race, but during the seventh lap, he was involved in a crash triggered by another rider’s error, fortunately without any physical consequences. The Spanish rider was unable to continue the race and was forced to retire.
Lorenzo Savadori, present as a wild card and hard at work developing the RS-GP25, had to retire due to a technical issue.
MARCO BEZZECCHI
“Fortunately, I’m fine. We took some x-rays but nothing is broken, so everything is set for the long race. I’m obviously in a bit of pain, especially the left leg and left arm. Up to that moment, the sprint race wasn’t going badly. I had a good pace and I was managing the tyres, also trying to make up a few positions. As for the incident, these things can happen. I’ll give it my all to ride the best race possible tomorrow.”
JORGE MARTÍN
“I felt good – maybe not on the first lap – but I was quickly able to overtake several riders and I was in sixteenth place. Starting from so far back, the front tyre had begun to heat up quite a bit and I began to suffer. I think that the long race will go better. The problem wasn’t the crash, but the fact that I started so far back, so now I need to focus on improving the time attack.”
LORENZO SAVADORI
“Qualifying was good. I was close to the factory riders and all the others, but in this MotoGP, it is never enough. The technical issue is something that can happen. With a laboratory bike, we experiment with a lot of things, so unexpected events can occur. The techs are still analysing what happened. In any case, something interesting came out of it. Just details, but every small detail makes a difference.”
FABIANO STERLACCHINI
“It was an unlucky race, partially conditioned by the less-than-brilliant result in qualifying. This is an aspect we need to work on, also because the risk of being in the pack is that temperatures increase excessively, like in Martín’s case. The same goes for Marco. Finding himself in traffic is not an easy thing to manage, especially on particular tracks like Barcelona. We’re optimistic for the long race because we’ll need to do better with different tyres and better management of the long race. For Savadori, there was a technical issue that we are looking into.” |
