Strong start for Vierge at home

2020-09-30 11:06
Home-hero Xavi Vierge put in an impressive performance during Friday’s two Catalan GP practice sessions, to finish FP3 third and end the day eighth in the combined times. PETRONAS Sprinta Racing Moto2 team-mate Jake Dixon also had a good day at Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya, finishing 14th.

Vierge, who has a special helmet graphic designed by one of his fans for his home Grand Prix, was able to complete a strong series of laps in FP1 and finish the session 16th, with a best time of 1min 45.131secs. Setting his flying laps late in the second Free Practice session, the Spaniard surged up the timings to finish the afternoon third with a 1min 44.800secs lap, which saw him round out the day eighth.

Team-mate Dixon had a positive start to the weekend, after staying within the top-ten for the majority of FP1. The Brit ended the morning 11th, with 1min 44.963secs being the fastest of his laps. It looked like it would be another strong session for Jake, however a Turn 2 crash in the final ten minutes of FP2 prevented him from bettering his 1min 45.916secs lap, which placed him 23rd. Despite this, his time from the morning was good enough for 14th overall.

Vierge and Dixon will next take to the track at 10.55am local time (4.55pm MYT) tomorrow for FP3, before the first Moto2 qualifying session gets underway at 3.10pm local time (9.10pm MYT).






Xavi Vierge
8th (1'44.800)





I’m really happy with the first day of this GP. From the beginning with the hard tyre I felt so good, but then when we switched to the soft tyre we couldn’t take advantage of it. Something strange happened and we couldn’t use the extra potential that this tyre normally gives. In both sessions we worked hard, but the afternoon was difficult because it was so windy. We still improved our fast lap though, so I’m really happy, and we’ll check the data to make another step forward tomorrow. We need to wait and see what happens in FP3, because the lap times should be faster than they were in the wind this afternoon. I think at the moment we are making the steps that we need to, to maintain the momentum of the last few races.

Source: SIC Racing Team

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