Mugello Grand Prix Moto2 Qualifying

2014-05-31 22:18
As the chequered flag ended qualifying at Mugello, the AirAsia Caterham Moto Racing Team finished the day having gathered valuable data and a positive direction for Sunday’s race.

Having made a number of changes to the #5 bike Johann Zarco was able to improve his time during qualifying with a 1’53.666 but not his position, placing him on row four for tomorrow’s race.

Concentrating on getting into a rhythm on the #2 Caterham Suter, teammate Josh Herrin pushed to pick up his pace. Despite being unable to reach his target of breaking into the top twenty, the young American achieved his quickest time in the final session qualifying in P26.

#5 Johann Zarco:

“It’s been a difficult day. In the dry conditions we are not able to be in the top three at the moment and for sure sixth tenths from P1 is not a lot, but I am fighting to do this. We need to try and find something to improve the pace.

“I’m disappointed for today but this won’t affect me tomorrow. I’m better now at the start so I will try to be aggressive at the beginning of the race and push to catch the leaders.

“It looks like it will be difficult for most of the riders to keep the pace from qualifying consistently. There is only Tito Rabat so far who is the most constant.

“We can still aim for the podium and I won’t give up. I trust in my team, the technical support and my chief mechanic, so I know we will find a solution and the good feeling that I had on the bike at the beginning of the season.”

#2 Josh Herrin:

“Position wise it isn’t great but we’ve made some good progress throughout the sessions. Although we’re still not where we want to be it’s our best qualifying result so far, which means we’re moving in the right direction.

“At the end of the session I felt a lot more confident on the bike and that I could begin to push more, so I know I have more to give.

“There is still room to improve the bike and we’re going to try a couple of things in the morning so hopefully we can find a good race set-up and I can get a good start.”


Team Manager - Johan Stigefelt:

“At the moment we are struggling a little bit too much.

“For here we had some new parts to try which haven’t really helped us in the way that we had hoped for, but we have continued to work on this and were able to improve the set-up quite a lot in the rain yesterday. This was good for us as we could see that we were competitive in difficult conditions. We were able to transfer some of the settings into the dry sessions as well. This improved both bikes but it is still not good enough.

“Johann is only 0.635s off the leader but we know that in the races the times are more spread out, so the qualifying pace doesn’t mean that much.

“The most important thing for tomorrow is for both riders to get a good start and be able to push for the points. I hope that Johann can fight for a position in the top ten and for Josh it would be great to see him finish within the top fifteen.”

Source: Caterham Moto Racing Team

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