Toba fins succes in Le Mans, Norrodin and Date just miss points
. By Bikeland Staff
The three riders of the Asia Talent Team put on a great performance in the second round of the Moto3 World Junior Championship, held today in Le Mans.
The good performance of Kaito Toba during training yesterday, where he ranked 12th, continued today as he crossed the finish in a credible 11th place. Meanwhile, team mates Adam Norrodin and Yuta Date were fighting for points in the championship, eventually finishing the race in 16th and 20th position respectively.
The race was affected by an accident on the first lap, which led to the emergence of the red flag. After the break, the race distance was cut to 12 laps and all three riders rode together as part of a large second group, after a bad start. Kaito Toba was able to regain position and led the group until the end of the race, finishing 11th, 18 seconds behind the winner, the Spanish Aron Canet. Date & Norrodin were penalized after committing some mistakes.
Alberto Puig said: “Today was a little bit better than Portimao. We made improvements, especially yesterday in practice. In the lap time Toba was one second from the poleman, and in Portimao he was nearly three, this is a good step. We improved a little bit the bike. We didn’t have so much time for practice in winter with this project but now we are slowly getting there. In the race we didn’t have a very good start but Kaito managed to finish eleventh. Date and Adam were a little bit behind. We will try to make some testing in order to go to Barcelona with better chances.”
Kaito Toba: “Today’s race was better, I didn’t get a good start but I feel I performed better this week, even though without enough testing it was difficult. 11th is better, next race we’ll aim for an even better position.”
Adam Norrodin: “At the start everybody passed me, after the first lap I was 19th, I started to push, I saw the Kaito group, I tried to catch them and just when I arrived I made a mistake and almost highsided. I tried to be focused but I made another mistake. Next race I will try to push more and we will see.”
Yuta Date: “I couldn’t execute the race strategy I planned because I crashed two times in each qualifying. My setting was improved in warm up though and I could push. I had hoped to move up positions but unfortunately I had technical problems.”
The next round of the FIM CEV Repsol will be on 21 June at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya.