Qualifying for the first race of the 2017 FIM CEV Repsol Moto3™ Junior World Championship got underway on Saturday at Albacete, with the first grid of the season decided in difficult conditions on a day interrupted by rain. With two sessions for both groups of qualifiers for Moto3™, one in the morning and one in the afternoon with slightly improved conditions, it was a stunning debut for 2016 Asia Talent Cup winner Somkiat Chantra as the Thai rookie took pole position for his debut 2017 race – setting a 1:42.063 to top combined timings for the Group A qualifiers and proving fastest overall.
With Chantra on pole, the success continued for the Asia Talent Team with Ai Ogura also proving a master of a difficult day, ready to line up in P5 with a 1:42.660. Yuki Kunii’s 1:43.594 sees the Japanese rookie line up in eighth for his debut, with Andi Farid in P11 and Kazuki Masaki in sixteenth.
Race day looks like it should dawn dry, with the Asia Talent Team ready to race at 14:00 local time (GMT +2) as 2017 fires up.
As always all of the action can be followed LIVE on FIM CEV Repsol YouTube channel.
Alberto Puig, Asia Talent Team Director: “It wasn’t easy for anyone because the conditions were really strange, but we took the best we could from these two practices and overall as a group we are ok. Masaki wasn’t so confident and couldn’t make it into a good position, but tomorrow looks like it might be a dry race – which changes the story a lot. But it will be the same for everyone, and we’ll try our best. We tested here, so we have more or less an idea of how we would want the bike to be in the dry.”
Download Qualifying Results
Dorna Sports, who already runs the successful Asia Talent Cup to support young talented riders, has taken its commitment to the next level by creating the Asia Talent Team in order to ensure the career progression of the most talented riders participating in the Asian competition during the 2015 season. The Asia Talent Team is run by Dorna as a part of its Talent Promotion Department activities.