Although it rained less than expected, in France, the weekend was even harder than expected for our boys.
A pole for Federico Caricasulo, with a race ruined by an electronic failure, and a top ten finish after a run off.
But Federico at least had the satisfaction of returning Ducati to Pole in Supersport after a 21-year break!
An uphill weekend also for Iker Lecuona who had never competed on the French track until now. For the Honda Spaniard, two top ten finishes have arrived but they are worth valuable points.
The appointment is at the end of September with the Catalunya Round. The summer will be over by now but our desire for motorcycles will not. You guarantee it, right? We want to hear this on our social channels. We are waiting for you!
SUPERBIKE
IKER LEUCONA RACE1: 9th
"Today was a tough but constructive day for us. This morning we finally had 30 minutes of dry track time to learn the layout. We also made a little step with the setup but not enough to give me a totally good feeling with the bike. In qualifying, being able to lap in 1’36” was good but the standings were so close that a relatively small gap of seven tenths meant that we had to start from the fifth row. And I still wasn’t feeling comfortable on the bike. So we decided to change the setup before the race and take something of a gamble with the front tyre, which we knew wouldn’t be able to last race distance without suffering a significant drop. The drop arrived, but until then I was able to ride very fast, the bike feeling like “my” bike again, which allowed me to make up many positions. Then, in the second half of the race, I basically just focused on finishing the race as well as possible, saving a lot of potential crashes, especially through the right-hand corners. Anyway, I want to thank my team for all their great work and for putting me in a condition to be fast and enjoy riding my bike. So we can be happy with another top ten, while preparing to use today’s experience to put together a better day tomorrow."
IKER LEUCONA RACE2: 10th
"This has been a very tough weekend for us, for several reasons. A new track, we lost Friday due to the bad weather and struggled with the bike setup… It seems we were lacking something in various areas, which prevented us from learning and improving. My start in the Superpole race was very bad today and I found myself seventeenth on the first lap! I felt very strong though and was able to climb back up to tenth before the rear tyre dropped with two laps to go. Finishing eleventh meant that I had to start further back in Race 2 and I felt really frustrated about that. I started better anyway, passing some riders through the first corner and trying to push to make up further positions. But again something happened and I almost lost the front through turn eight. I managed to save it, picking up the bike somehow, after which I stuck more or less with Locatelli, Baz and Gerloff but wasn’t unable to catch them, despite trying right the way to the last corner. We need to learn from this, to understand what happened during the weekend so we can come back stronger for the next race."
SUPERSPORT
FEDERICO CARICASULO RACE1: DNF
"Until the bike stopped, everything was fine. Pole Position this morning where we were the strongest and then also in the race we were leaving. Today was a great day. Unfortunately we had a bit of bad luck and a problem that knocked out the bike. At the moment the guys are working on it and we'll see. Too bad because we could have achieved a good result and instead a zero came out. We'll get our own back!"
FEDERICO CARICASULO RACE2: 9th
Unfortunately I didn't get into the second one, because I went long and maybe I climbed too fast. I found myself in the gravel and this ruined the race because when I started I had lost too much time. We will make up for it in Spain.
