MotoGP, Malaysia Day 3, Raúl Fernández (Aprilia/DNF): "It's strange to go from a victory to a retirement"

Raúl Fernández had a difficult Grand Prix in Malaysia, a week after his first MotoGP victory.

Raul Fernandez has experienced a rollercoaster of emotions in the space of a week. The Spanish rider secured his first MotoGP victory at the Australian Grand Prix after steadily improving since mid-season, before finding himself at the bottom of the standings in Malaysia last weekend. He wasn't the only one, however, as The entire Aprilia team encountered difficulties on the Sepang circuit..

Qualifying only 15th, he finished 13th in the sprint race before experiencing an even more difficult race on Sunday. After a poor start, he plummeted to 18th before gradually climbing back up to 14th. However, he made a mistake on lap 12 and was unable to restart. He attributes this error to a poor tire choice.

Despite the disappointment, Fernandez believes that his performance should be viewed as a whole, and gives a positive assessment of the overseas tour, including three top 10 finishes, two podiums and one victory. “It’s entirely my fault; I chose the medium front tire. It was the consequence of trying something different at the last minute, and it didn’t work. But hey, last week I got my first win, and we also had some good performances in Mandalika and Japan. Overall, the overseas tour has been very positive. You can’t judge everything based on just one race. We already knew this circuit was one of the worst for us. It’s strange to go from a win to a retirement, but that’s part of the job.”, did he declare.

“I started to feel a drop in performance from both tires, but especially the front, and I felt like the rear was putting too much pressure on the front. One lap before my crash, I recovered from what could have been a very big crash at turn 5, and I decided to ease off the pressure on the bike a bit, reduce the power, slightly decrease the engine braking, and adopt a smoother riding style. But coming into turn 1, I braked a little too early, and as I started to lean into the corner, the rear again put pressure on the front, causing me to lose control.”

“Since I didn’t finish the race, we couldn’t gather any more data. In any case, our pace wasn’t very competitive. We need to thoroughly analyze what happened this weekend. Nevertheless, the overall result of the overseas tour is very positive. We knew this circuit would be difficult for us, so we need to focus on the positives. Of course, the big mistake was not finishing the race, because even two, three, or four points would have been beneficial for me and the team.”, he concluded.

Malaysian Grand Prix Results :

Classification credit: MotoGP.com