Top Ten Moto2 Qualifying Debut for AirAsia Caterham Moto Racing2014-03-22 20:43Today marked AirAsia Caterham Moto Racing’s first qualifying session in the Moto2 Championship. Under the floodlit Losail circuit, experienced rider Johann Zarco came out strong holding a top five position for the first half of the session. With the top fifteen riders separated by less than one second, the Frenchman finished in P9, giving AirAsia Caterham Moto Racing their first top ten qualifying position, starting tomorrows race from row three. Despite being unable to progress on his time from free practice three, Moto2 rookie Josh Herrin made a positive start to his debut into the championship. The young American adapted well to his new Caterham Suter and pushed hard to improve but struggling with chatter was unable to advance, qualifying in P27. Johann Zarco: “After qualifying in 9th position initially I was disappointed for sure. I did my fastest lap in the beginning but then we had some issues with bike set-up. The team worked hard to fix it and in the end I was able to repeat the same lap time, so this is the most positive thing. “For sure how we are working we are going to improve step by step so I cannot be upset. We will aim to get many points tomorrow and the podiums will come as soon as possible.” Josh Herrin: “We made a couple of initial changes which didn’t work so we set the bike back to how it was in FP3. I struggled to get back into a rhythm so I was unable to improve my time from yesterday. “Hopefully tomorrow we can get a good start and mix with the guys in the top twenty. All the practice starts I’ve done on the bike have been good and I’m a much better racer than a qualifier. I’ll try as hard as I can so hopefully we will have a real solid race and be able to leave here positive and ready for Austin.” Johann Stigefelt: “First practices and qualifying here in Qatar. For Zarco I think we have done a good job. The bike is not 100% perfect but we can see that we are OK in average speed and I believe we can have a good race tomorrow from the results in qualifying. “The session started out very well for Johann but unfortunately the conditions were not exactly the same as yesterday but that’s the same for everyone. In any case he did his fastest time on lap three and we are still on the third row. With a good start we can be fighting for a top six position. This is the target for tomorrow and to take home some good points. “I’m sure we can improve the bike a bit more in morning warm up so we will see how that works out. “For Josh we are quite disappointed because we were expecting more after yesterday’s free practice three where he looked very good and he was very positive. “We did a small change at the beginning which wasn’t good so we changed back to how it was in FP3. Unfortunately this didn’t work out for him either as he experienced a lot of chatter, so he was not so happy with how the bike was working. Now we need to go through the data and see how we can improve things and make the package better for him tomorrow. It will be difficult from 27th position but he is a good starter and he is a racer so we will see what happens, as anything can happen in the race.” Source: Caterham Moto Racing Team Click here to visit our forums to discuss this story |
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