Diogo Moreira lost a lot of ground in the first corner at Assen, and had to fight for the entire race with a motorcycle "untenable".
Diogo Moreira He had to fight hard at the Dutch Grand Prix to reach the finish line. The young Brazilian didn't have an easy weekend after building momentum in the last three GPs. Having automatically qualified for Q2 in Italy, Hungary, and the Czech Republic, this time he had to settle for 14th place on the grid, then 11th in the sprint race.
He could still hope to climb back up the race, but he had a chaotic start. Dived into the first corner, he was hit by Franco Morbidelli and lost his balance. The Italian was then held up by a Pramac rider, and the domino effect continued as Moreira was then pushed off the track, towards a KTM rider.
In addition to losing time and exiting the corner dead last, he also lost two winglets in the impact, which affected the rest of his race. Despite a very unstable bike, number 11 gave it his all to climb back through the field. By mid-race, he had regained his initial 14th place and, although he was briefly 12th, he ultimately finished 14th in a race he'd rather forget.
“In the end I finished the race, but honestly there was nothing I could do. I had a normal start, and in the first corner Morbidelli touched me and pushed me off the track, and I ended up on another rider. The main wing on the left side of the bike broke, and the rear wing too.” he explained during his debriefing.
“Since the left wing was broken, the bike was uncontrollable in long left-hand corners; it was impossible. It was also moving around a lot. I only had one wing intact, and as soon as I shifted into fifth or sixth gear, it would start to move, and I had to slow down, otherwise it was impossible. In the end, there was nothing I could do. I saw that I was in the top 15, and I thought, ‘Okay, I’ll just finish the race and that’s it,’ but it was impossible to ride like that.”
Results Grand Prix From the Netherlands :
Classification credit: MotoGP.com
